Episode 5: 70-pound weightloss part 2 (When Your Body Is Struggling)

In episode five of The Jamerrill Show, Jamerrill shares part two of her 70-pound weight-loss story, picking up in August 2023 during one of the hardest seasons of her life. This chapter isn’t about a perfect plan or a dramatic overhaul. It’s about survival, grief, nervous system regulation, and the daily choices that slowly compounded into change. What began as an instinct to simply walk and move through heartbreak became a steady rhythm of simple meals, consistent movement, and small acts of self-care. Over several months, the scale began to shift not through restriction or stress, but through stacking manageable habits in the middle of crisis. Jamerrill also addresses common misconceptions about stress-related weight loss and explains how chronic cortisol and inflammation actually made healing harder, not easier. The episode closes with an unexpected turning point: after losing 60 pounds, alarming lab work revealed deeper metabolic issues, shifting her focus from weight loss to true metabolic healing. The heart of this episode is a reminder that slow progress still counts, fluctuations aren’t failure, and you can begin imperfectly even when life feels overwhelming.

Listen on your favorite platform

You can watch the full video episodes on my second YouTube channel, and the audio is available on Spotify, Amazon, Apple Podcasts and other podcast platforms.

Key Takeaways

Slow Weight Loss Is Still Real Progress
Jamerrill lost 25 pounds over two and a half years before crisis even began. It wasn’t dramatic, but it was steady and it mattered. Progress doesn’t have to be fast to be meaningful.

Movement Became Survival Before It Became Fitness
Walking wasn’t about calories or steps. It was about regulating her nervous system, processing grief, and accessing “hope molecules” (endorphins, dopamine, serotonin) during trauma.

Stress Does Not Magically Melt Weight
Contrary to assumptions, chronic stress elevated her cortisol, increased inflammation, and worsened insulin resistance. This was not a “stress diet”. Stress made everything harder.

Fluctuations Don’t Equal Failure
She watched the scale rise and fall weekly before settling lower. That pattern of fluctuate, hold, release became normal. Weight variability was part of the process, not proof of failure.

Weight Loss Does Not Automatically Equal Metabolic Health
After losing 60 pounds, her lab work revealed high hs-CRP (inflammation), pre-diabetes, insulin resistance, and high cortisol. The journey had revealed another layer of healing from basic weight loss to deep metabolic healing.

Resources Mentioned

• Trim Healthy Starter
• Function Health
• THM Meal Planning Guides

Transcript

Watching the scale slowly come down over several months, I was accomplishing something. I was doing something for my body. I was doing something for myself, and that mattered.

Welcome back again today, friends, to the Jamerrill Show, where we are doing this for 2026. This is episode 5, and this episode is part two of my 70-pound weight loss journey. In the earlier episodes of the Jamerrill Show, I shared why I decided to start this podcast, how movement became a lifeline for me during incredibly deep grief, and how walking slowly led into running. How learning to care for my body helped me steady my mind, and that became a lifeline for me when all of life felt so overwhelming.

In the last episode, episode 4, I shared the longer health story that came before August 2023. And that story shares the years of struggle, survival, medical issues, and exhaustion, and how I was doing the best with the limited capacity that I had. So, if you’re interested in the full context, I encourage you to go back and listen to those earlier episodes.

Today’s episode, I’m going to share the next part of the story. This is where I talk about what happened from August 2023 forward. And my story is not a sudden transformation. It is not a perfect plan. It’s very much about the daily choices that I made during crisis that slowly became a 70-pound weight loss and a turning point in my health. So this is not a quick-fix episode, though, and this is not a blueprint. And thankfully, it is not about perfection. And if it’s not about perfection, that means that I can do it. This is a story about my survival first and a level of healing that came slowly and surely over time.

I’m focusing on this topic of my weight loss journey because I get questions about my weight loss every single day. And many of you who’ve watched my journey over many years, well over a decade on my main Jamerrill Stewart YouTube channel, you’ve watched these changes unfold over the years, and you still have more questions about it. So my hope is that these episodes can become a resource, and also a resource for me to point people to when they have questions, and also a resource for you to return to at your own pace.

I also want to say that before we begin the journey, the journey down the road where all the questions have come from and you hearing me talk about losing 70 pounds, I absolutely do not have everything figured out. I have not reached some final destination with my health or my body. What I’m sharing with you is my journey so far, what I’ve learned in the process, and that story is still unfolding. This podcast is about learning alongside one another. I’m not presenting a finished version of myself that has arrived. If you’re in a season where you’re just trying to figure out how to keep going or if you’re wondering how healing can happen when life is still very hard, I hope that this episode meets you right where you are. Let’s keep going.

Also in today’s episode, I’m going to talk about numbers. I do not believe that the numbers on the scale define my worth or anyone’s worth. I am aware of the numbers on the scale because they were data points for me, and I watched the numbers change over many years. So this is my bio-individual story. Again, people will message me or comment and want to know, “What’s the program that you did? What’s the one thing that you did? How did you lose all the weight?”. And sometimes the feeling is, “Tell me quickly how to lose the weight. I want to lose 70 pounds in 90 days”. And that’s not what this is. That’s not what my story is. My story is a very gentle weight loss over a long period of time through active crisis. So my hope is that that gives you hope in your own unique journey and that things can be hard and things can be slow, but that choices can be stacked over time and from a bird’s eye view perspective, those can add up to results.

At my highest weight, and I’m 5’4″, I was 210 pounds. And that was when I was postpartum with my ninth baby. As I shared in part one of this episode, episode 4, I started back with that Trim Healthy Mama starter book as my best friend, back on the Trim Healthy Mama plan, January 2021, when I was so very sick with my kidney. I was in my third trimester of pregnancy with my ninth baby. And when I got out of the hospital, all I could do was sit on my couch in that room out there and read the recipes in that Trim Healthy Starter book and do my little meals for myself every day based on that book. And that was my starting point for this leg of the journey. But again, in episode 4, we go back even years before that.

So from January 2021 until early summer 2023, through the kidney, the surgery, the baby, another hospitalization, antibiotics, so much postpartum, breastfeeding—so many like, “how many things can come at my body?”—by early summer 2023, I had lost 25 pounds. And for many people, they hear that and they’re like, “Okay, that’s over two years. That’s so incredibly slow”. But that is part of my slow and steady journey. I was not in a place where I could add in any extra movement on purpose. A lot of life was survival mode, but I ate on that plan. And people could not tell I had lost 25 pounds. No one was messaging me every day back in summer 2023 asking how to lose weight. But I knew slow and steady over time I was losing weight, and I was hopeful. I remember early summer 2023 being happy that I had gone from 210 to 185. And I had high hopes then that I was going to continue to, even if it took several more years, continue to slow and steady lose the weight and get my body—I didn’t know the term about being metabolically healthy yet—but I was trying to be healthy overall, and it was not fast. And there were a lot of other life factors coming in, stress being a big one, high cortisol being another one. But again, I had hope.

I will also say, in the months that followed summer 2023 into 2024 and even 2025, I have received some comments about me being on a stress diet, and how stress has worked for me, and the stress alone has made 70 pounds magically melt off my body. And that is absolutely not my lived experience, and that is not my story. I had many things going on in my body, but I had high cortisol from chronic stress. And cortisol raises inflammation. Cortisol worsens insulin resistance. And high cortisol often prevents weight loss. Stress made everything harder. So, this is not a stress weight loss story.

Before August 2023, when I started my little THM starter book again, January 2021 until July-ish 2023, yes, I was thinking about weight loss slow and gently over time. And I had watched 25 pounds go down in the right direction over about two and a half years. That is where my mind was.

It was precious. I don’t know what video I was watching. I think I was watching one of my—because in 2026, I’m also trying to get, you know, like one short-form video out a week on Instagram and TikTok and and around in the online universe—and I believe I was watching some of my “Day in the Life” TikToks from like 2022 or so, maybe even 2021. And they were precious. It was precious to me because—and I feel tender saying this—so it was precious for me to see my daily whiteboard in that universe because I am in such a different universe now. And so, just to see, remembering what my days were like. I mean, it’s been, you know, what a decade these past two and a half years have been, or, you know, multiple decades it feels like. And so, one of the precious things that I had on there as I’m narrating my day and sharing little clips was about the hour walk I wanted to take in the afternoon, and how I didn’t get to that hour walk, but I got the read-alouds done with the kids and other things happening that evening. It was just me managing my day with a newborn and homeschooling a household and getting dinner in the slow cooker and and just all those elements. And I remember during that season writing an hour walk many, many days, and also many days I could not get that in.

My health, including my right kidney and the E. coli in my body—past episodes explain, right? YouTube videos to show it. But I just remember taking care of everybody else so much that there just was not any time to take care of myself. And it’s not that I didn’t want to, but the one thing at that time I was doing for myself is I was clinging to my Trim Healthy Mama starter book. I was using those meals and that eating style as my framework and I was getting that done every day. And so even without the movement, the 25 pounds, slow and steady. And I would have been happy as a clam if over two and a half more years I had lost another 25 pounds.

Then in July 2023, I had a miscarriage of my tenth baby, which I talked about in the last episode. And so August 2023—what we say around here, right? What do we say, friends? We just say, “Insert massive life implosion here”. Okay. August 2023: worst nightmare life implosion. And I didn’t have a plan. I was not thinking about weight loss. I was not thinking about movement. I was only thinking through getting through minutes and hours and a day and the next day and a week.

I do remember at some point when I walked into this new universe, I didn’t have the language yet for my nervous system. I did not know what my nervous system was, but I had this intuitive push within me. Like I felt like I had to move, like literally move my body forward. It was just, it was like a push inside, like I need to just, I need to move my feet. I need to move my body. And very quickly, so again, my weight loss story picks up here, not at all with a, “I’m going to lose the rest of the weight now”. It was just very much, I have to move my body and figure out how to get my next breath.

And I walked. One random day, a few days into my nightmare, I just walked. And I walked in my driveway and I cried and I processed, and that lasted for several hours. But during that I had a really weird feeling that made absolutely no sense. “Why am I, why do I have this feeling? Where is this coming from?” I actually connected just a speck to hope. I had like a little “hope molecule”. And I know now—I cannot quote the science, I cannot quote the science—but we have hope molecules in our body because I just listened to a book on movement and the whole muscular system. And those hope molecules that I was releasing in my body was endorphins, dopamine, serotonin. Also talking about my new best friend, the nervous system. Walking helps naturally regulate the nervous system. And for many people, walking can lower their baseline cortisol level.

So again, this makes me feel tender. But somehow even that first walk gave me this dose of hope that in the natural, what I was living, what I was experiencing, what I was making decisions about, the harsh reality in front of me, there should have been, there there was no hope, but I felt, I felt that shift. It was, it was a tiny little gift. And I had also moved my body enough and cried enough that when I came in, it made sense. It was like the next logical thing to do was to take a hot Epsom salt bath. And I know you’ve heard me share about this over the years and in the past episodes. And that first day that I did that first walk and that first hot Epsom salt bath, that became my baseline. That that’s still my baseline two and a half years later from that first experience. And with those basic activities, I was then able to sleep eight hours.

As I’ve shared with you, the fact I had movement, I had those endorphins, the dopamine, the serotonin, the natural nervous system regulation. I had the nice hot relaxing Epsom salt bath, which my body responds very well to, and I had sleep. I proved to myself I could make it through that day. And I had a basic framework on how I was going to make it the next day. And so my next piece of framework, my next little thing that I could control in a life where there were so many factors I could not control.

During my pregnancy and miscarriage with my tenth baby, I was about eight weeks along and I found out early July and I lost the baby on July 31st. And so in early September, at the very beginning of my most extreme nightmare tragedy, I was at 195 at this point. And again, I wasn’t focusing on the numbers. I wasn’t focusing on the weight loss. I was focusing on getting through the day. And so I also saw my food I put in my mouth as care for myself during crisis as well. And so I clung to my best friend, my THM starter book. It felt safe. It was familiar. It did not increase my cognitive load. I already had a whole new world to learn about and new decisions and new things I was having to put my brain into that I never thought would be part of my reality. So that was not the time when I was going to research eating plans and make other big decisions. I was going to walk. I was going to get a hot bath. And I was going to use the framework of that Trim Healthy Mama starter book.

Another thing I experienced during that early season, and I know many of you watched me walk this out on my main channel slowly over time, is I could not meal prep for myself or for my household or do any of those normal tasks at all. It was just very, it was, it was the whole world was down to very basic self-care. And I had days where I was on the road all day going to appointments and things. And I would have days where I would just need to go walk at the park for four hours and then come back for my bath routine. And so I quickly learned where and how to eat out to still stay on my plan, follow my little book, but I did not have to cook for myself. As I’ve shared in past episodes, we had freezers full of freezer meals. And that got my household through the first 12 weeks of the massive emergency.

For myself, I would stop at Hardee’s. You know the order, right? If you don’t, I would get the double bacon cheeseburger wrapped in lettuce. You just ask for it low carb. They wrap it in some extra paper. And there were even days where I would drive through twice, but most days I was driving through once, especially if it was a heavy appointment day. Then my other local option was at my local Chinese food restaurant, and I could call them on the phone and they would make me steamed chicken and broccoli, and I’d get the little tub of white rice, no sauce. And I could call it, and within about 15 minutes I just had to walk through the door, get it, and then I could eat it in my car.

As the weeks progressed, I was able to get back into my Trim Healthy Mama promoted meals, easy things like sweet potatoes. We love those in all the forms. And this may not sound appealing to you, but it’s a Trim Healthy Mama universe thing. It’s a great hack. And so it would be a sweet potato with some cottage cheese, ’cause that was some extra protein, and maybe some shredded chicken on the top. Then as I progressed, I also got into getting cauliflower rice. I could order it from Walmart. Thankfully during that time, that’s also when Walmart delivery became a thing in my local area, so I could order cauliflower rice that was microwavable. We have since then found fantastic deals on it at Sharp Shopper, even the Whole Foods brand. And Walmart had these little microwavable steamer dinner bowls, and they were protein bowls. And it might have like chicken and som e very small broccoli and a little bit of a cream sauce and the carbs and the protein and all the nutrition facts on the back. Checked a lot of my boxes. And so I would order like five or six of those at a time. So when I’d have lunch at home, it would be my cauliflower rice, and I’d microwave one of those and I’d dump it on top. And so many days that’s also how I started to feed myself at home again.

But these very simple meals kept me fed. I was absolutely not under-eating. I was not calorie counting. One thing about me that you can count on me for, I love food. Obviously, I have a massive meals channel, right, and a whole setup around it. So, I’m not not going to eat. And I was definitely eating at that time as well. I just could not think through a meal plan for the week, and it had to be very easy for me. So I made it through the entire month of September 2023 with that framework, with those very easy lift meals and getting walking in. Not thinking weight loss, just thinking I have to support my brain and my body to survive this.

Then in October, for bonus points, made it to the end of October, and I took my kids roller skating. I was just like doing my last lap, and the roller skating time was about to end, and I thought, “Yeah, this is so fun. I need to take them roller skating more, skate with them more”. I’ve loved roller skating since I was seven or eight years old. “We need to do more of this”. And about that point, I’m going up in the air and I’m coming back down. And as I’m hitting, before I hit, I braced myself because by the end of October, I was about seven weeks into walking being a part of my everyday. And I hit my hip hard. Quick thoughts while you’re up in the air and as you come down and have impact was I didn’t want to break my hip because I knew I needed that movement every day. But my left wrist felt a little funny. It didn’t hurt. My hip hurt more than my wrist, but it was funny.

So, of course, they stopped the music. They met me out there. I slowly got up. I had them get me ice. I wrapped my left wrist in ice, drove the kids home with one hand, flipped right back around, drove myself to the Dairy Queen. By this point, I knew my wrist was broken. In fact, when I pulled up, I told one of my guys, I was like, “Go get me some more ice packs. I’m going to the emergency room”. And my mom was here, so kids were with her. Priorities—my wrist was already broken. And I was so, so sad. And I went through the Dairy Queen and I got myself a large Reese’s Cup Blizzard and I sat in the parking lot before I went into the hospital and I just cried and cried and cried in that Blizzard ’cause it was like, “How is this even real?”. And then, “Suck it up, buttercup”. Went into the emergency room. X-rays. They said two broken bones. So very sad.

By the time I was all wrapped, I asked the physician’s assistant, I’m like, “Can you just just take a picture? We might as well. You know, I should remember this moment”. And that was a whole other journey. But I learned through that: many times broken wrists require surgery. Mine did not. When I did get into the orthopedic doctor, they wanted the swelling to go down, and they didn’t see me. I stayed all wrapped up like that for over a week. Then when they saw me, the swelling had gone down. They took X-rays again. It was only one broken bone, and I got to wear a removable brace.

Now, I was also barely working at that time. Thankfully, I had savings that was earmarked for something else, but that’s what we as a household were living off of. I’m sorry, I guess I can quit holding my broken, my invisible broken wrist here. But through all of that, I had thoughts of trying to get working again. I did get out, you know, one or two videos a month instead of the regular 12 to 15 I’ve been publishing for years. And I just remember, I think I did do a cooking video with my wrist brace. I just had to go really slow. Couldn’t lift any of my pots. And I believe, though, by end of December, early January, I was out of the brace. And thankfully, within two or three days of the broken wrist, I was right back outside walking.

So during fall 2023, obviously weight loss was not my focus. But I did notice it start to happen. Starting September 2023, I was at 195 after the 10-pound weight gain resulting from my miscarriage. And by the end of September, I was about 189. So I had lost about six pounds. The scale would bounce week to week. But that was the first time I had seen any kind of weight loss movement in quite a while. We could really just average that out to a little less than a pound a month. But there were months I would see no change, which again lines up with the health issues I had and the life stress and the breastfeeding. And I wanted the weight loss to be slow and gradual.

Then in October 2023, I lost about seven pounds that month. So I started the month at about 189. And by the end of October, with my sad, broken wrist and believe me of that Dairy Queen—the Dairy Queen Reese’s peanut butter cup blizzard did not cause weight gain—by the end of October, I was 182. What I started to notice in October is the scale would go down two to three pounds and then it would be up one to two pounds and then it would finally settle on the lower number. Oh, and also September ’23 and October 2023, that’s when I was out trying to film and shop one evening and a tree came through the roof. So again, just the stress points added up.

Then in November, I went from 182 to about 175. And I again, I noticed that pattern: the fluctuate, the hold, and then the release. It was also by the end of November 2023 when I transitioned from my heavy daily walking into also running. And when I added the running in, it’s not that there were these additional extra weight loss results. That was also for my mental health, for those hope molecules, for the endorphins, and that was more good movement for myself.

So, in December, I started at about 175, and by the end of December, going into 2024, I was 168. And I would watch the scale. It would be 170. It would be 168. Oh, that’s nice. Then a week later, a few days later, however often I would weigh, it would be 171. And by that point, I was like, “Okay, I bet when I weigh next week, you know, we’ll, we’ll see a different number”. And then it would rest at say 167.

Then going into January 2024, I started the month at about 168 and I ended the month around 160. So that was about eight pounds in one month, which was the largest month of weight loss I had. And then over about February 2024 into March 2024, I went from 160 to about 153. So that was another seven pounds over six to eight weeks. And there was lots of hovering. I’d see 155, I’d see 154, and then 156, and then 153. And so I was not panicking. I was delighted. Honestly, just like walking gave me the endorphins, the dopamine, the serotonin, connected me to the little sliver of hope. Watching the scale slowly come down over six to eight weeks, and at that point over several months. Again, I was accomplishing something. I was doing something for my body. I was doing something for myself, and that mattered.

Then in April 2024, I went from 153 down to 150. And so the total loss in that season, from September through April, over about seven months, was another 45 pounds for a total 60-pound weight loss. Fluctuations didn’t equal failure for me. Settling and watching the scale fluctuate was part of the process. And then I entered a full year of maintenance. Again, that wasn’t the plan. That’s just what my body decided. My body was really comfortable at 150 to 153. And I was really, really happy with that progress. And I continued to move the same way. I continued to eat the same foods. And I figured at that point, my body had just done so much. And safety is always a number one priority. And my body was like, “I’m comfortable right here for now. This is all we’re doing at this moment”.

In August 2024, even after the 60-pound weight loss and then maintaining that weight loss for several months, in August 2024, I got some very devastating lab work. My hs-CRP was heart attack and stroke level. It’s a high inflammation marker. It was 5.7. I was pre-diabetic. I was insulin resistant. I had high cortisol and adrenal fatigue. And that’s just not what I was expecting with that lab work after losing 60 pounds. And I really believe that my lab work was what it was in August 2024, which again, lab work is lab work, is a picture of that time, a picture of the day. But I had several new layers of unimaginable stress in summer 2024. And I believe even though I had lost the 60 pounds, that chronic stress was again the cycle of high cortisol in my body which was leading to all the high inflammation.

I had no knowledge yet about blood glucose besides a very old, old-school LPN nursing education from several decades before. I had that basic knowledge. I knew how to test blood sugar. I knew how to give insulin based on a doctor’s order, based on what the blood sugar reading was. But I did not understand how my fasting blood glucose was still high after losing 60 pounds, and how the fasting insulin marker is also so very important.

So at that point, starting in August 2024, my mindset shifted. At some point during my journey it became not just survival mode, “How will I move my body and feed my body?”. At some point, probably winter 2024, I was like, “Oh, this scale is moving. This is fun. This is a fun hobby, a fun activity. This is making me feel like I can set goals and I can reach them”. I needed any kind of encouragement I could get. And I know I’ve called this my 70-pound weight loss journey, which I have lost another 10 pounds, but I had to shift my focus to my metabolic health healing. About 10 months or so into my metabolic health journey, which again we’re going to dissect in the next episode, but I believe my body just got to a point where it felt okay again to begin releasing weight again. And I slowly lost another 10 pounds over several months. And that’s where I sit at now in January 2026 is a total 70-pound weight loss. And I’m watching the scale do what it does and what it’s done for months. The lowest I’ve gotten to is 140. And I will fluctuate from 140 to 141, 144, back to 143, maybe 147, then 145. We just play in those numbers. And my goal honestly at this point is not any further big weight loss. And now in 2026, I have a whole other layer of healing that I’m focusing on.

I hope this encourages you that you do not have to have all the answers and know everything before you begin on your journey for your health and healing. And you don’t have to have permission from any outside source to start doing what you can to care for your body. You can start right where you are and you can start with whatever is easiest on you. I started—I clung to that THM starter book. I’ve probably pointed a lot of people to that book. I clung to that book because it was a low lift for me and I was not at that time having to put any new information in my brain or make any decisions. You are allowed to trust yourself and trust that you will learn what you need to learn as you move forward. And you can begin imperfectly and you are also allowed to change your mind, learn new information, and make new decisions for yourself. So my story definitely isn’t finished.

Come back to the next episode. I’m going to go over the beginning of my metabolic health healing journey, many of the experts that I learned from, some tips and hacks that I implemented, and how it did result. It does, happy update, it does result in me completely reversing a lot of my very scary lab numbers with me focusing on the metabolic healing piece. I appreciate you. Thank you so much for being with me today.