For years, Susana (@livinglavidawithlove) said the same sentence to herself and never did anything with it.

“For a long time I was like, ‘Yeah, I'm going to lose weight. I'm going to lose weight.’ Nothing really ever worked. I also never stuck to it.”

She is more than 60 pounds down now. The part she talks about most isn't the number — it's that she finally stopped letting the number run the day.

She Started by Walking

Susana dates the start to April 2024. What she reached for first was walking: 10,000 steps a day, outside, in a city where that means layering up in winter and giving up by noon in summer.

“I'm not an expert on weight loss. I'm just kind of like going with the flow since the beginning of April of 2024.”

She owns a walking pad and is honest about how much she uses it. The outdoors wins most days.

The Year of Weighing Everything

Walking turned into the gym, and the gym turned into strength training alongside a calorie deficit she kept up for about a year. It worked — roughly 35 pounds in that stretch — and it cost her something at home. Dinner on a normal school night meant cooking two separate meals.

“Was it easy? Absolutely not.”

Trying Something Different

About a year in she was tired of weighing and logging. She started a GLP-1 medication in July of last year, stopped counting for a while, and describes losing about 25 pounds over that period. Then came roughly six months with nothing moving on the scale, and she went back to tracking — this time without the edge it used to have.

“Now I'm to the point where I do count my calories, but it's not as obsessive.”

What the strict year left behind, she says, wasn't the weight.

“It changed me into a different person and also someone that knows how to do weight loss in different ways. It doesn't just have to be a calorie deficit.”

Sweet Life Balance

Susana has her own name for where she landed.

“I found that balance in life. I call it sweet life balance. I can enjoy a treat without making myself feel guilty.”

Day to day that looks less like a meal plan and more like a plate she assembles from whatever is in the fridge — kimchi, avocado toast, chicken breast, cucumbers, tomatoes, raspberries. She is not a meal-prep person and says so plainly.

“My plate will always be mostly whole foods and protein.”

The Weeks That Don't Work

Susana is unusually frank about the gaps. Transitions wreck her routine, and she will say the number out loud: 26 days without the gym. When she restarts, it is often between 9:30 and 11:00 at night.

“There is no perfect weight loss journey. I'm not always motivated or disciplined, but we're all doing the best that we can.”

Seeing Progress Beyond the Scale

Susana does not see her own progress, even now. Her husband told her that her legs looked toned and she told him he was wrong.

“Even though it's right in front of me, I don't see it. But then there's ZOZOFIT that will kind of like point it out with numbers and kind of like just reassure you that you're making progress.”

“My favorite part is the scan.”

What She's Working on Now

She is between 160 and 163 pounds, and she is not trying to go much lower.

“I don't necessarily have a goal of losing anymore — I kind of just want to focus on gaining muscle, look good, feel my best, and get stronger.”

Her Advice

Focus on protein

“Focus on protein and don't beat yourself up so easily.”

One cookie is not a reset

“To have a cookie, it's okay. To have the ice cream, it's okay. You're not going to ruin all your progress.”

Follow Susana's journey on Instagram - @livinglavidawithlove

Items They Actually Swear By

The tools Susana named herself, plus a couple our team rates alongside them.

• A walking pad — she owns one and is honest that the outdoors wins most days, but it is what makes 10,000 steps survivable when Atlanta is in the high 90s

• Adjustable dumbbells — her neighbourhood gym is dumbbells only, and that was enough to build on for a long stretch

• A phone tripod — she props her phone on a content-creation tripod to scan, and would rather have one built for it: “It would be cool if ZOZOFIT creates the tripod that's meant just for that”

• A beanie and a face cover — unglamorous, and the reason the walk still happens in January

• An exercise mat — a year of core work happened mostly on the floor at home