Welcome to my website about losing weight, getting healthy, and getting happy in your life ...

... I lost over 40 pounds after discovering the secret behind my weight gain. This is my story ...

Dear Friend,

My name is Chere Michelle and it is my passion to help people like you lose weight and get healthy ...

Like everyone one of us, I have a Story that shaped the woman I have become. Perhaps you will find something you can identify with and parallel to your own Story.

My Story isn’t over at all; I like to think I’m in the middle of the book somewhere, just arriving at the part where I have ‘found’ myself and the key to loving who I am and achieving Happiness in my life. Surely this is the turning point of my Story and the rest of the chapters will thus fall into place…

I was always ‘big boned’ as a child, or so I was told. I remember having to shop in the Husky Section of girls clothing in K-Mart as a little girl.

How I hated looking up to see the big sign hovering over me, “HUSKY- size 13-24”. The Husky clothes were never as fashionable or pretty as the regular clothes, and who wants the word Husky emblazoned on the back pocket of their jeans in 4th grade? My butt was already bigger than the other girls so did I really want a sign announcing it even more?

3rd Grade was so painful for me...

The 5th and 6th Grade boys at my school used to wait by the entrance for me to come down the hill, alone. The wielded long sticks taken from the nearby alder trees and would run towards me screaming wildly- they were hunting whales, the sticks were their pretend harpoons, and I was the prey!!!

My mom did tell me then; when I started to develop hips and breasts, that it was just baby fat and boy, would I knock the boy’s socks off once I hit high school. She assured me it would all melt away to reveal the lovely, shapely woman underneath I was to become. Looking back on those days now, I realize I was getting quite chubby and was way bigger than the other girls. No wonder the boys used to torment me so terribly.

Today I embrace my hips, my tummy and my curves. I listen when my boyfriend tells me I have a beautiful body and I thank him from the bottom of my heart. A few years ago I couldn’t have done that. I either would have scoffed at the man who said that, or told him he’s crazy. I just wouldn’t have accepted the compliment graciously at all.

My 20’s were the hardest years I’ve lived so far. I wanted to be someone I clearly wasn’t and would never be so bad, that I stopped living for myself. I became the person others wanted me to be; the life of the party, the constant comedian, the belle of the ball. I tortured my body and mind with bouts of starving myself to taking laxatives to try to be the slim model-stereotype I was bombarded with on TV and in magazines.

The pain was too much for me to handle alone... I walked around in a fog most of the time because my body was craving nourishment and my soul was craving love. I never did achieve that model body- I realize now it’s because my body, my bones, will NEVER be that small. It’s just not physically possible. What I achieved instead was a constant merry-go-round ride of weight loss and weight gain. Up and up, round and round I went every day until the pain became too much for me to handle anymore. I was sick of running away from my life, of never having someone to love me (oh if only I’d realized it was because I didn’t LOVE MYSELF!) and of being a burden to others. I couldn’t think of any other way to feel better than to just take myself out of the equation. I didn’t know how to be happy inside or be happy with the person I saw in the mirror staring back at me with sad eyes. It seemed so impossible to reach out and grab on to her, and will her to accept who she was, work on why she didn’t love herself…and find out HOW. That seemed too daunting a task- a task I simply couldn’t comprehend.

This is me before I found the secret that was making me fat and did something about it!

One desperate night I wanted to end my life...

It took a silly move one night with some pills, and a desperate phone call to my parents to help bring me out of that dark place. My poor parents drove hundreds of miles, in a blizzard with my mother very ill, to come get me and take me home. I can still remember the stops we made along the highway for Mom to get out of the truck and be physically sick on the side of the road.

I feel this was the beginning of my healing process but it was FAR from over. I took this opportunity, as I sat at my parent’s house in a remote small town in coastal British Columbia, to start to journal again. I chose to start creatively and used a book by Sark called, “Journal and Playbook.” I’m not sure if this book is still available but go ask at your local bookstore. It’s a truly amazing book and has places to draw, to write and to explore the Inner You. It asks you to draw out your hopes and dreams and to fill in the branches of a tree with those people who have been the most influential in your life. Because I couldn’t actually formulate all the crap in my head into words, this was exact format I needed to begin to find myself. I always was a creative person but I’d lost her somewhere along the way.

I Never fixed the INSIDE of me...

Please don’t think all this was because of poor body image alone, or low self-esteem in what I looked like. That was just a PART of it; the whole picture was my mind, my soul and my dying Spirit. I just saw the girl in the mirror first and foremost and she is what others saw…so I chose to put a lot of emphasis on the physical side of things. I see now why I did this; it was to avoid looking INSIDE and fixing what was broken in there.

This wasn’t an instant miracle. I didn’t learn to love who I was overnight. My battle continued onwards and it did include many more dark days. I never fell so low as that fateful night, but trudged on through my life experiencing several toxic relationships and dead end jobs.

I had NO idea how to love myself...

I fell in love for the first time around 1995. I thought it was love anyway. I see now I was totally blind and while in this relationship I lost the fragile hold I had managed to get on who I was.

I wasn’t part of a ‘relationship.’ I was simply THERE. Years later I can look back on this time and I realize, how immature and lonely I was- HOW BADLY I WANTED TO BE LOVED. But I needed to love myself first.

When I left this relationship I began a journey of self exploration that involved my sexuality and coming into WHO I was. I won’t lie to you- the journey was long and often difficult.

I had a series of short relationships and dates with some great men that never really evolved past that initial physical connection. I don’t regret these at all- I learned a lot about my sexuality, my body and what I was capable of feeling.

I was Blind...

Then I met someone else and again- I went into it blind and moved too fast; all I could see was a relationship had fallen into my lap, and this person wanted to commit. I felt old and it was “time”. I did love him as he did have some wonderful qualities but I found myself looking at him as the years went by, and thinking “is this who I want to spend the rest of my life with?”

That relationship ended more than 3 years ago for me. When I pulled away and ventured out on my own (again) - that’s when the weight came off. It didn’t happen on it’s own by accident; I worked damn hard at it and developed a way that worked for ME. I didn’t realize that when I was in the relationship- I holed myself in my house and ate…I ate donuts, and tons of pasta, ice cream and chocolate bars. What was I feeding? My unhappiness? Getting out on my own was the absolute BEST thing I could have done for myself. It was like I was re-entering the world.

My world had become a jail cell...

I had been a prisoner for too long- so to move back into Vancouver and be surrounded by this constant mingling of people, sounds and smells, was my medicine. It was spring when I settled in to my new apartment and everyone was crawling out from the winter to run or bike along the beautiful Vancouver Sea Wall.

I took a good look around and saw beautiful, fit, trim and healthy people with every glance. They seemed to love life. They were perched on picnic tables in Stanley Park, smiling and laughing with loved ones. Or running along the grass to catch a Frisbee and walking beautiful proud dogs. It was so perfect yet all I wanted to do was scuttle back to my apartment and hide.

I began my Daily Food Log and Journal. It was an idea that had come to me years before but I never had the discipline to follow through with. I wrote down EVERY thing I ate, all the choices I made to eat out and any form of exercise I did. I felt I had to document every little step of my life and slowly, these steps began to add up. I saw results, I FELT results. I made smarter choices and rewarded myself for them. I felt proud of myself.

It doesn’t seem like much, but when you log what you eat and when you get out and exercise- it really makes you become aware of what you really do in a day. I started my journey at 165 lbs. and lost 40 lbs. I went from size 15 pants to 7/8 and the feeling was incredible.

I still have to keep an eye on my weight and have learned many ways to take control of my life.

But I LOVE my new body! I have learned to accept my curves and and a few bumps as my own. Now, when the man I love says I have a sexy shape, and he can’t keep his hands off of me- well that does WONDERS for a girl!

Trust me- you will get to where you want to be, but to fix your physical self, it takes a lot of healing on the inside. Don’t expect any miracles or instant fixes without looking inwards, respecting your body and feeding your soul. If you do this, I promise the path will become clear. I hope you sign up for my newsletter and stay with me to find out for yourself.

I’m proud of you for taking this step; YOU should be too.

Love Chere Michelle ...

P.S. You owe it to yourself to be HAPPY and TO BE LOVED. Sign up for my newsletter and let me be your friend on this journey. I look forward to hearing YOUR story!

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