Sandy Minchew has struggled with her weight for as long as she can remember. Born and raised in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, where she still lives today, Sandy is a happy wife and mother to two children, ages 8 and 12. She manages a busy career in pharmaceuticals and works hard to keep up with her children, both of whom are very active and enjoy playing basketball. Amidst her busy and full life, Sandy hadn’t been able to find the solution to her lifelong battle with the scale—and she knew that after decades of yo-yo dieting, it was time to get the help she needed to lose the weight for good.
“Over the years, I had tried so many times to lose weight—diet after diet, year after year,” says Sandy. “From a young age, I was often thinking about how to drop the pounds. My mom even convinced me to do WeightWatchers® with her when I was in high school. I did lose some weight, but then I went to college, gained the ‘Freshman 15’ and things snowballed from there. At some point, I tried to just accept who I was and feel happy about the body I had, but if I was being honest with myself, I wasn’t happy with it at all.”
As an adult, Sandy went back to WeightWatchers and later tried the prescription weight loss medication, phentermine. She lost about 50 pounds but then gained much of it back.
“For years, I was really missing that coaching piece that is really essential to losing weight,” says Sandy. “I needed a better understanding of nutrients and serving sizes and how to blend things together to make them work for my body.”
