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Woman loses 170 pounds, becomes different person

Ceeley Williams, who once weighed more than 350 pounds, says weight loss has changed her life.

Staff photo by Rick McCrabb Ceeley Williams takes a turn at bat with her son, Kian, 6, playing catcher Tuesday, June 30, at Goldman Park in Middletown.

ENLARGE PHOTO

By Rick McCrabb, Columnist Updated 7:28 AM Thursday, July 2, 2009

MIDDLETOWN — Ceeley Williams’ 1-year-old son wanted to play with his mother on the floor.

That was fine, Williams thought, except she couldn’t get down on the floor and certainly couldn’t get back up.

So he reacted just like you’d expect: He stood in the corner, lowered his head and pouted. He threw in tears for free. It was a good old tantrum.

Little did Kian Williams know, but he probably saved his mother’s life — or at least extended it — that day.

“That was the turnaround day,” said her husband, Brandon. “She woke up and said, ‘I’m not going to live that life.’ ”

In 2004, Williams, now 28, weighed at least 350 pounds. She can’t be more specific because her scale’s limit was 350.

“That was rock bottom,” Ceeley Williams said recently while sitting in her Middletown living room. “I was an introvert, lazy, to be honest.”

The excessive weight was taking her health down “a pretty bad road,” she said.

The day after the incident with her son, she bought weight-loss DVDs, started walking a half-mile a day, kept a food diary and began counting calories.

She traded white bread for wheat, bags of chips for carrots, and she ate a small piece of cake instead of an entire cake, one slice of pizza instead of three large ones, and one scoop of ice cream instead of five gallons.

She used to consume 3,000 calories a day, mostly junk food, she said.

It was time for a different lifestyle not a diet.

“It all added up,” she said.

And the pounds fell off.

Three months later, she had lost 35 pounds, about 10 percent of her body weight. She continued to lose weight, about 2 to 3 pounds a week. By April 2008, she had dropped 170 pounds.

She was half the woman. And twice the wife and mother.

When she lived in Kansas and weighed more than an NFL lineman, Williams refused to leave the house. Her weight tied her to the couch.

Now, she doesn’t like to stay home. She recently camped with her kids, and practiced softball with her daughter Tuesday, June 30, at Goldman Park. She’s active at Amanda Elementary School where her children, Brande, 8, and Kian, now 6, attend.

She calls herself “a completely different person” who, at the time, wasn’t “very happy.”

Brandon Williams, her husband of nine years, certainly has witnessed the transformation.

“It is quite amazing,” said Williams, 27, a co-manager at the Mason Walmart. “She is a lot more outgoing. If you knew her before, and now, you wouldn’t think it’s the same person.”

She refers to herself as the “fat me” and the “me now.”

Several years ago, Williams joined TOPS — Take Off Pounds Sensibly, a nonprofit, noncommercial weight-loss organization.

She said there’s “no better organization” for those wanting to keep off the weight they’ve lost.

Contact this columnist at (513) 705-2842 or rmccrabb@coxohio.com.