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Lindsey M Adams weight loss

Yesterday, we introduced you to Linsey M. Adams, the 29-year-old Chicagoan, who after many years of struggling with her weight, worked hard and dropped a whopping 140 pounds. Obviously, it wasn’t an easy process, and early on, it wasn’t a goal that Adams was necessarily confident that she could attain.

Even after losing her first 50, Adams said that she still didn’t tell anyone about her efforts, aside from her friend and mentor Stacey, because she thought it wasn’t really going to happen for her. Despite her changing look and her popular video blogs on YouTube, Adams opted to speak about everything but her fight for her life.

“I had been video blogging for almost five years before I started my weight loss journey,” Adams said. “Even though I would blog about my hair, and plus-size fashion at the time, I still didn’t talk about my weight because I didn’t think it was going to happen. I’m not going to lie. I did not think this was ever going to be possible. I was a size 24. So my dream weight was a size 18, like a more average-sized plus-size girl. When I went to Lane Bryant shows and I went to Ashley Stewart shows, those were the type of girls who were big and cute. I was just big. I was round, round big. I never imagined that I would do this ever in my life, mostly because people in my life were obese on both sides. So it took the first 50 pounds for me to even acknowledge that I was losing weight.”

It also took for those around her to encourage Adams to share her story with her followers. And by doing so, she was given the motivation to really put words into action and make it to her goal.

“Once I started sharing it with my YouTube community, that helped keep me inspired like, ‘Okay, I can really reach my goals!'” Adams said.

Still, she was cognizant of the fact that while it’s hard to take the weight off, it’s easy to put it back on. So once she finally reached her goals, she never had a Rocky at the top of the stairs moment and felt that she had done all that she needed to do.

“I already knew that people gain weight very easily,” Adams said. “Because I was always in a program where I was receiving information from groups of women or professionals, I never took it for granted, the idea that you lose the weight and you made it. No. I changed my mindset and had a mantra that said, I am a healthy and fit person who cares about nutrition and has a healthy relationship with food.”

Lindsey M Adams

Still, as Adams decided to open up more about losing the weight and as she became a health advocate, encouraging her followers, there was one thing she continued to avoid talking about: The skin that was hanging on her after shedding so much weight. In the beginning, she was hoping her hard work would help to reduce it, but going harder just made things worse.

“Because fat becomes smaller and you get crinkly skin, you think you need to lose more weight and you keep going to the gym and going super hard,” Adams said. “And you can’t change your figure no matter what you do. And that’s where the devastation came on later on.”

She continued, “I have 400 videos and maybe one-third of them are weight loss, health and wellness videos. And I only have one loose skin video. And it’s interesting because I can talk very deep about a lot of various topics, but I can say the loose skin, I didn’t talk about that much. And they [TLC] filmed me for so long and they got that I didn’t talk about it because, to me, there was nothing you could do about it. People get very deterred at losing weight because of the skin. But nowadays, for me, I am a health advocate, so my mantra for that is, loose skin won’t kill you, but obesity will. So that’s what I’ve learned to tell people.”

But as tomorrow’s premiere looms, Adams also said that she hopes that other people won’t be discouraged by the realities of the loose skin and the costs of getting surgery to remove it. Because while Adams was lucky enough to have such an opportunity, it doesn’t happen for most.

“That’s going to be very interesting. But I will continue to share my message of breaking free from the binds of obesity because that’s first. So, anyone who wants to start to talk about their skin, I’m always going to bring them back to my initial tools. And I think once people change their mindset to really be a healthy and fit person and not just do it for a boyfriend, Miami, or to be in a crop top, even if they can’t get the skin removed, they’ll be mentally stable enough to deal with it. And that’s my hope.”

We’ll talk more about Adams’s skin surgery tomorrow, and share images of the more than 100 pounds of skin she had removed from her body. We’ll also share exclusive video from her Skin Tight episode, which premieres tomorrow. Again, in the meantime, check out her social media channels, including Facebook, TwitterYouTube, Instagram, and her website to stay tuned into her story.

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