Here’s your Friday #fitspo! When Zumba instructor Jamie Bell weighed 269 pounds, she worried what clients would think of her appearance. “I felt like I wasn’t setting a good example because I wasn’t anywhere near a healthy weight,” the 34-year-old from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, tells Us Weekly. “I just wasn’t comfortable in my skin anymore. I was just ready to do something.” (Watch our video above to hear Bell tell her story.)
So in February 2015, the mom of Benton, 5, Whitley, 3, and Amelia, 16 months, made the life-changing decision to join Weight Watchers. In just over a year, the soft-spoken blonde has lost an astounding 105 pounds off her 5-foot-8 frame and now wears a size 8.
“I had my kids at the zoo a couple of months ago, and I stopped to talk to a lady that used to go to our church, and I could tell she absolutely had no idea who I was,” says Bell. “So I had to explain and she was like, ‘Oh my goodness!’”
Not only is Bell unrecognizable, but she feels like a whole new person. “My son and I just ran a 5K mud run obstacle course a few weeks ago, which was the coolest thing to get to do with him,” she raves. “We were scaling walls!”
Though Bell regularly attends weekly in-person meetings, she’s become a sort of celebrity on Connect, a social network on the Weight Watchers app, where users share tips and post photos. “I think it’s inspirational for people to see someone like me, who is a mom and busy, come so far,” she tells Us. “I think that helps motivate them and gives them the hope that they can do the same thing.”
