I look at the picture and all I see is like the extra wrinkles that I have in places where people don't normally have wrinkles and it's tough like I don't want my daughter to grow up having this horrible self-image because her mom does.

And I thought losing the weight and doing all of these physical changes that I wouldn't have that anymore, but I still do every day.

And that's really, really hard.

Welcome to how-to'm Charles Doohig. Each week on the show we try to help people

solve their problems and often people write in when they know they need to make a

major change in their life,

like the listener from an earlier episode who was trying to find her first kiss at 38.

Or sometimes they reach out to us because they're on the brink of something big.

But this week, we're trying to help a listener who's already made a massive change.

And now she's dealing with an unexpected aftermath.

Meet Ashley from Texas. I am recently a stay-at-home mom to three

kiddos and I've recently gone through some pretty substantial fitness and health changes.

Ashley is 31 years old now and over the years she has struggled with her weight,

trying all kinds of different diets.

But none of them worked.

So at my heaviest I was 325 pounds.

How did you feel physically during that time? So the funny thing, if you've never been like up to that weight level or to that size,

I mean you definitely know that there are things that hurt because you're heavy, like your knees

or your ankles or your back, you it doesn't happen overnight because you know every pound you put on you you start to get this new normal

By the time I hit 325 I had a newborn and I had a almost four year old, and I was exhausted all the time and everything hurt.

And that's just the physical parts of it.

Emotionally, you feel defeated and you don't feel pretty

...