Tina Cole Campbell spent almost her entire life watching the scale go up and down.
“I’ve done every diet, tried every fad,” she tells PEOPLE for the2020 Half Their Size issue. “In the last 30 years, I’ve gained and lost 1,000 lbs.”
When Campbell graduated from high school, she weighed 180 lbs. By the time she had her two sons 13 years later, she was up to 320 lbs., and then started dieting again and lost 150. The next year, she was back up to 250 lbs. with high blood pressure, and her health problems started.
“I first got sick in 2003. I was given a beta blocker for my blood pressure that put me into respiratory arrest,” she says. “I’ve been in respiratory arrest six time between July 2003 and December 2006, and I ended up on a lot of medications — 36 at one point — and a lot of steroids.”
Tina Cole Campbell
“The doctors told me that I wasn’t going to live to be 40 years old,” she says.
“I spent three days just crying and freaking out,” she says. “Then I told myself, ‘Get up, you can do this.’ ”
For more on Tina and five other women who changed their life to get healthy, pick up a copy of PEOPLE, on newsstands now
“I found that eating lean proteins, fruits and vegetables, complex carbs and a lot of greens and fiber works best for me,” she says. “It got to the point where I was losing consistently every week.”
Campbell also realized that her mindset was changing. Now single, she “wasn’t doing it for a guy.”
“I was losing weight for me, because they had told me I wasn’t going to live. Now I’m 46 and I’m still here.”
Tina Cole Campbell.Kat Borchart
Campbell has now lost 340 lbs., and feels like her life has done “a complete 180.”
“I feel like I’m alive for the first time in a long time,” she says.
She admits that she’s still working through longstanding issues with body dysmorphia — even though she’s lost well over half her size, Campbell sometimes still sees a 500-lb. person in the mirror.
“I still carry some of that emotional baggage, but I’m working on it every day,” she says. “Every morning I wake up feeling blessed that I’m alive.”
source: people.com
