It’s not every day that you hear a woman say her divorce was a “blessing in disguise.” But that’s the case for 34-year-old Betsy Ayala.
Though she’d struggled with her weight her whole life, Betsy reached her heaviest after giving birth to her daughter in 2013.
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Weighing in at 260 lbs., Betsy wasn’t as concerned about her physical heath as she was her mental health. She’d begun wrestling with postpartum depression and anxiety.
It was around this time that Betsy’s brother suggested she try eating better, as a way to help herself feel better.
“I had a newborn, and I didn’t have the will to cook,” she says, “so I learned about Herbalife shakes and I gave it a shot.”
To her surprise, the change in her diet slowly started to work. Betsy started to feel better, and although weight loss wasn’t her intention, she even began to shed some pounds.
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Down 30 pounds postpartum, Betsy was feeling pretty good about life. She’d managed to tackle the depression and anxiety she was experiencing after giving birth, and got her health on the right track.
That’s when everything she’d ever known came crashing down.
She discovered her husband—and high school sweetheart since the age of 17—was cheating on her.
“At that point, my whole world fell apart.”
To add salt to the wound, she found out he’d been calling her a “cow” and “fat” behind her back.
Despite being deeply scarred, Betsy says they tried for months to make their marriage work, but to no avail.
“At that moment, I thought, ‘This is not going to define who I am. I don’t want to be the way I have been all these years.’ That drove me to make a permanent change in my life.”
Her determination to move on with her life, and be a healthy, happy role model for her daughter, moved Betsy to make some radical changes.
“I wanted her to be proud of me and have an example of a strong mom that perseveres despite whatever happens, and have a happy life. That moment was when I decided that I wasn’t going to be the same person I was before.”
Christmas 2013 came and went, and along with all of the other New Year’s Resolutioners, Betsy hit the gym in early 2014. Despite never being active before, she was determined to make a change.