Background A beautiful young woman, Shawna did a bit of modeling in her early 20’s and now wants to pursue it more seriously. Large sized her whole life, Shawna has spent a lifetime dieting and then gaining the weight back. "As a larger woman, you wear baggy clothes all the time and learn to avoid mirrors. The wake-up call for me came when I couldn’t fit into the largest sized clothes the stores had. Talk about feeling like crap. Worse, my blood pressure was high and I knew the time had come to get healthy."
Why Taking It Off Shawna had started on the Jenny Craig plan last January and had lost 30 pounds by audition time for Taking It Off. She still had a distance to go if her dream of modeling was to be realized and she thought being on a public forum would be a big motivator to get serious about her weight loss.
Challenges Sabotage and setback loom around every corner for Shawna. Because she’s always been heavy, Shawna has no mental image of herself at a healthy weight so she finds it difficult to visualize her goal. Her overweight sister constantly tries to undermine Shawna’s dieting efforts by pigging out in front of her. Shawna’s friends love to party hard and the weekends are devoted to binge drinking and wild revelry. An emotional eater, Shawna has been fighting depression since the tragic accidental death of her father during the first few weeks of shooting.
Weighing In "I plateaued for a few months during the show and it was really frustrating. I’m a size 20 and I need to be a size 14/16 for modeling but I think I can do it. Participating on Taking It Off has helped me develop new self-confidence and I’m doing lots of new things, such as aquasize, yoga, Latin dancing and acting classes. I’ve learned to focus on one thing a day, either food or exercise - trying to do it all perfectly is too overwhelming and I’ve learned that weight loss is a slow process. As for my cravings, I can now just take one bite, just for the taste - I don’t need to eat it all.
