Mom loses 85 pounds in 8.5 months — thanks to 7 simple fixes

Health

By Tracy Swartz

She’s found a crystal-clear path to weight loss.

Crystel Saturday, an Atlanta-area mom of two, says a few simple lifestyle tweaks have helped her drop 85 pounds in nearly nine months. She credits stopping nighttime eating, limiting herself to only one non-water drink a day, cutting her food portions, and power walking 15 to 30 miles a week.

“I somehow had settled into thinking that being heavy was just how I would be for the rest of my life, but then a switch went off,” Saturday, 40, recently told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“I was tired of the excuses and tired of feeling like junk. I was 39 years old with children who deserve the best of me,” she continued. “I was overwhelmed and depressed, but I decided I’d focus on just one thing at a time.”

Now, Saturday has accumulated nearly 70,000 Instagram followers by sharing her weight-loss journey, which began in January 2023 when she was 225 pounds.

She was down to 140 pounds in October 2023.

“Step 1 is to stop night eating, have four hours between dinner and bedtime,” Saturday explained in a February post.

The Realtor told the AJC that her family — which consists of her husband, Ryan, and their two young sons, Levi and Jace — dines at 5:30 or 6 p.m., and she eats nothing else before bed.

She maintains a 16-hour fast between dinner and breakfast the following morning, noting on Instagram that she doesn’t count the coffee she drinks at 7:30 a.m.

“I don’t take my first bite of food until 10:30 a.m.,” Saturday told the AJC. “I use water when I feel hungry and I’ll break the fast for special occasions, but the routine has become second nature.”

Saturday recommends drinking half your body weight in water ounces, so if you’re 200 pounds, you need to consume 100 ounces of H2O a day. She also advises eliminating non-water drinks from the diet, except for one a day. (Coffee doesn’t count.)

Other tips include tracking calories, limiting added sugar to 30 grams a day, and introducing weight training.

Saturday has launched a Commit to Change program to help others shed weight and learn the healthy habits she’s fine-tuned over the last 15 months.

“There’s this demand to help people and I take this responsibility seriously,” Saturday told the AJC. “I’m up front about the fact that I’m not a trainer or a nutritionist, and I’m also not an influencer. I’m helping people on an intimate level, not influencing them for a moment, but giving them tools they can use for a lifetime.”