In a new episode of the transformation webseries Brand New Me, mom of two Krista Francis shares the story of her dramatic weight loss journey. “I’ve been morbidly obese since I was a teenager,” she says, adding that she had become dependent on food as a source of “emotional satisfaction.”

Krista’s weight gain continued into adulthood, and then into motherhood, when she had her daughter Adalie and her son Ezra, who was born with cerebral palsy. “He’s had many surgeries over the years, and he needed a mom that was going to be able to take care of him appropriately,” she says. The turning point came when Ezra was still a baby, and Krista realized that she couldn’t fit through the door while carrying him.

“I felt diminished,” she says. “I felt very embarrassed, just disappointed in myself that I had got to that point that not only could I not fully take care of some basic needs, but I couldn’t help my son in the moments when he really needed me. That was a very big realisation for me that I needed to change my life.”

Over the next three and a half years, Krista changed her diet and committed herself to losing weight and improving her personal health and fitness, so that she could be there for her children. In doing so, she discovered a love of exercise that she never knew she had, and going to the gym and working out have become an integral component in her new lifestyle.

“That is a part of who I am now,” she says. “I work out five days a week. If I could work out seven days a week, I would.”

She enjoys deadlifting and squats in particular, and now has aspirations to celebrate and showcase her transformation by competing in physique shows.

“My interest in bodybuilding sparked probably after the first year and a half of being in the gym,” she says. “I want to be able to show other people that it is possible, that you can go from this to a completely different mental attitude and discipline… There’s always an opportunity to be better, and do better, and you’re going to fall along the way, and that’s OK, but you don’t give up. You keep going.”

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