Lose It! Employee Spotlight: Introducing Hannah!

Hannah Cole is a Boston-based writer, editor, Gryffindor, and one of the newest additions to our Customer Care team. Her relationship with Lose It! started long before our first meeting via Google Hangouts, and she means it when she says “goals-oriented” on her resumé. We’ve got the story to prove it.

How It Started 

Hannah’s weight-loss journey began when she was laid off from her dream job during the height of the pandemic (their loss was our gain because she’s an absolute rockstar).

She felt defeated and turned to food, which was a habit she’d come to passively accept over the years. This went on for a few weeks before she decided enough was enough. She found an amazing Lose It! Facebook group following the C.I.C.O diet (Calories In, Calories Out). Their advice was to ignore her budget at first and focus on food logging. “It forced me to almost zoom out and take a snapshot view of my relationship with food,” she said. “…My relationship with food was somehow #1 in my life, even before my relationship with myself.”

It felt like her weight was part of her identity, and there was nothing she could do to change it. Once she realized this was her perception and not reality, she was ready to take on the world:

Being overweight is hard – there’s the constant anxiety of whether or not you’ll fit in a seat (and if you’re lucky enough to, there’s the nagging fear that you’ll break it), the endless trips to the amusement park that you skip out on because you’ve been through the shame of being kicked off of a ride before, or just the never-ending feeling that you’re taking up too much space. Changing your eating habits is also hard, but who decided it had to be harder? You can choose to prioritize food and emotional eating above yourself, or you can choose to fight for yourself. I was living my life for food, and as a result, I wasn’t really living at all. That’s what truly motivated the change in me… At the end of the day, it’s not easy, but it’s certainly easier than giving up on myself.

Midway Check-In

When she lost the first two pounds, she was “practically shouting it from the rooftops!” Hannah’s grandma, affectionately known as Nonna, was her number one fan. Hannah gave her daily updates about her weight loss progress, and Nonna cheered her on for every single pound she lost.

It was surprising how quickly the weight came off. She wasn’t really exercising, just counting her calories and running more errands. Those subtle changes made a world of difference. By January of 2021, she had lost a whopping 90 pounds!

When Nonna passed that month, it was her toughest challenge to date. She now had to navigate her loss and COVID-19. She decided to adjust her goal to maintain her current weight so she wouldn’t turn to food to cope. “I was really proud of myself for being able to stay in the same weight range for about two and a half months,” she shared. “…Maintaining weight is even harder than losing.” You have to change your perspective of the scale and accept that it’s just data, not an “end-all-be-all.”

How It’s Going

Now, she’s back to focusing on losing. She just celebrated her first anniversary of downloading Lose It!, and has lost 100 pounds! (Did we mention that she’s a rockstar?) Funny enough, she lost the last ten pounds by the time we published this article. She told us, “I know my Nonna would be cheering for me again right now!” We 100% agree.

We have insider info that she commemorated the milestone with a social-distance approved Slack celebration and a well-deserved pint of Cookies and Kram ice cream.

Before Lose It!, Hannah’s typical day was multiple caramel iced coffees, lots of snacks, and “the far-too occasional midnight UberEats McDonald’s order.” She and her boyfriend like to joke about how she used to look at drive-thru menus and laugh because “who gets fast food and looks at the calories?”

She did a complete 180 about how she thinks about food:

There are no good foods and no bad foods. Food is fuel, but it’s also delicious, and nothing is off-limits.

Now, she likes to make copycat recipes of her go-to fast food snacks with a side of air-fried veggies. She recently did a spin on the KFC Famous Bowl. If she ever writes a cookbook, we’ll let you know.

To satisfy her sweet tooth, she opts for sugar-free sweets, fruit, and flavored Greek yogurt. Of course, she still has her caramel iced coffee (with fewer pumps of caramel) and the occasional McDonald’s sundae or medium fry. For Hannah, it’s all about balance and working it into her budget.

Hannah’s Craving Tip

Trust us, it’s a game changer:

If I crave something, I plan it for the next day — that way, I have something to look forward to and can remind myself that I’ll enjoy it when I have the calories to do so. Logging in advance has helped me plan around my cravings, rather than try to ignore them!

TLDR: There’s always room for Cookies and Kram — just plan accordingly. Absolutely. Genius.

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Thank you so much for sharing your story, Hannah! We’re so proud of you and happy to have you on the team.