42-year-old Imani has struggled with her weight since the age of seven. She started her first diet at 12, with dreams of losing thirty pounds overnight with over the counter “fat blockers”.  Those dreams were dashed the next morning, beginning a dizzying cycle of failed diets, frustration and adolescent angst that lasted until seventeen, when she experienced her first real weight loss. With discipline and doctor prescribed diet pills, Imani dropped over fifty pounds. Then she started college and gained the freshman 15 plus an additional twenty, landing on a roller coaster of gaining and losing the same forty pounds for more than a decade.

 

In 2005, Imani made the first real progress of her wellness journey. As Shape magazine’s first ever African-American Weight Loss Diarist, she discovered her emotional eating tendencies, and with the help of a psychologist, nutritionist and personal trainer, lost over thirty pounds and created a plan for successful maintenance. Balancing work, marriage and trying to start a family upended her efforts, and the weight crept back on.  She struggled with fertility, and rounds of unsuccessful IVF treatments left her heavy and despondent. The birth of her son in 2013 was miraculous, but when the haze lifted, Imani tipped the scales at over 250 pounds.

 

Frustrated by her inability to shed the post-pregnancy weight and wracked by sciatica and arthritis, Imani once again embarked upon a series of unsuccessful diet programs and schemes, including a stint of balanced dieting, hoping to lose weight quickly and easily. Each one left her feeling hungry and unfulfilled.  She plateaued around 220 pounds and looked around for a more than a diet, she needed a lifestyle that should could live with. Enter Ede. In November 2017, Ede having successfully shed over eighty pounds on keto, suggested that Imani try it.  She took a shot, and three months later is down 25 pounds, and nearly pain free.