Dropping Pounds: Dina Shingleton, 40, of Amityville

Dina Shingleton, 40, Amityville

Occupation: Amityville Village Clerk/Treasurer

Height: 5-foot-3

Before

June 2014: 188

After

October 2015: 148

SEE PHOTOSHow did these 150 LIers drop up to 320 lbs. each?

HER STORY

Dina never remembers being thin. She was "chubby" as a child, and as an adult, her weight hovered between 175 and 185 pounds. But she always shopped in regular stores, usually buying size 14. "I wasn't an unhealthy eater. I was just eating too much and not exercising," she says. After a yearlong battle with plantar fasciitis in both feet, "I just decided I needed to lose weight. I had been fooling myself. If I took the weight off my body it would take the weight off my feet," she says. In November 2014, Shingleton started a "clean eating" program, which meant no sugar, no processed food, no dairy, and no carbohydrates. Instead she ate lean proteins, vegetables, quinoa and brown rice and drank two high-protein meal replacement shakes daily, plus a nutritional cleansing drink twice a month. She lost 10 pounds the first month, felt energetic and set a goal of fitting into a bikini. She decreased her portion sizes, ate slowly and became mindful of what and why she was eating. So now, instead of pasta with meat sauce, she has brown rice pasta with turkey meat sauce that she makes herself. She got into the bikini in June.

DIET

Shingleton has a shake for breakfast and another for lunch. Dinner can be brown rice, a skirt steak, roasted vegetables and a big salad. Sometimes she'll cook a pork shoulder in the slow cooker and shred it to make quesadillas with brown rice. Snack examples are salsa or hummus on brown rice cakes, a hard-boiled egg, or apple slices with almond butter.

EXERCISE

Shingleton uses The Daily Burn, a smartphone app that has workouts for different levels and abilities. Five to six days a week she does 30-40 minutes of free weights, plyometric box, squats, body weight exercises and "burpees" (a four-step stand, squat, kick exercise).

ADVICE

Make small tweaks in your daily life. Don't make a huge declaration and say you're going to change every aspect of your life. Instead, first get your portion size under control, then try eating more organic food, and then add in moderate exercise. Small changes when put together make big changes.