At age 15, she was the largest girl in her class at Seton-La Salle High School. Weighing 240 pounds, Maria Jarosh said she couldn't fit under the desks in class.
"I would try to be the first one to class, so I could squeeze in without anyone having to see," said Jarosh, now a healthy and fit 22-year-old weighing 135 pounds.
The dramatic weight loss completely changed her appearance. She's unrecognizable to those who haven't seen her in years. The healthy way she dropped the pounds landed her on the cover of People magazine's August issue that came out this week.
"It's so surreal. I had no clue I was going to be on the cover until this week," Jarosh said. When a People editor called to let her know, she had to sit down to handle the exciting news.
As an overweight teen, Jarosh couldn't shop in the juniors section of stores with her girlfriends. "I was the clothes holder," she said, meaning she held her friends' clothes in the dressing room that they didn't want, and would get other sizes for them.
By high school, she said she was "isolated" and "alone," since her friends joined athletics and she was unable to physically or emotionally keep up.
Jarosh's family supported her since she was a child, but she said it wasn't until she made up her own mind to lose the weight that she was successful.
Sitting at her kitchen table one night, she saw her mother's Weight Watchers books and picked them up. Realizing she could eat her favorite foods in moderation, she decided it was time to take some action, so she joined the program with her mom.
"I never looked back," she said.
The first 80 pounds was lost through diet alone, she said. After that, exercise was added to the mix three times a week.
Lisa Jarosh sent her daughter's story to People in February, but didn't tell her daughter about it. Within weeks, an editor responded asking for more photos of Maria's dramatic physical change. By July, Maria was wearing a bright yellow bikini on a photo shoot in New York, and that picture is on the magazine's cover.
From a size 28 to a size 6, Maria Jarosh wants to use her story to help others like her. She'll graduate from California University of Pennsylvania in December and wants to get a master's degree in social work.
"I would love to start my own practice for teens and adults who are overweight or who have been overweight and lost the weight and need the counseling," she said. "I healed myself physically and emotionally. There's a lot of emotional problems that stem from being overweight your whole life, and so I reached out and got the help I needed, and now I want to help others."
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