Skinnytaste Recipes and High-Protein Foods Helped Willa, 79, Lose 113 lbs: ‘I’m Really Living Now!’
Not only did she get lean with foods she loves, she reversed her type 2 diabetes too
Key Takeaways
- A Texas grandmother lost 113 pounds and reversed diabetes using Skinnytaste recipes.
- High-protein foods (around 140 grams daily) helped Willa break through her plateau.
- Skinnytaste recipes made healthy eating sustainable—not just another diet to quit.
When Willa Brown first asked her doctor how best to lose weight as a woman in her 70s, the Texas grandmother had no idea high-protein foods and Skinnytaste recipes would change her body and her world. And that’s because her doctor had a pretty bad attitude. Here’s the “advice” Willa got: “Learn to love your body as it is. Women your age can’t lose weight.”
Luckily, Willa doesn’t suffer fools. “I said, ‘I do love my body, but I can’t stand the way I feel,’” she recalls. When the doctor just shrugged, Willa fired her. We hope for the sake of that doc’s current patients she takes a good look at Willa now: down 113 pounds, type 2 diabetes reversed, mobility restored—all without drugs. Willa feels unstoppable. And she’s sharing her secrets.
The first steps Willa took to reclaim her health
Willa eventually turned to a new doctor and WeightWatchers. Yet she gives much of the credit for her transformation to Gina Homolka, author of the Skinnytaste cookbook series. Why? “I’d been on and off WeightWatchers since before my wedding in 1968, losing when I followed their different programs and gaining when I stopped,” she explains. “I had to get out of that ‘on or off’ mindset and find a way to make healthy eating my default.”
Woman's World Answers
As she pondered how to do that, her mind went to Skinnytaste. “I’ve made the recipes for dinner parties, and people always rave. They have no idea they’re healthy,” Willa says. It seemed like what she needed long-term: really good food that was also good for her. So she challenged herself to eat Skinnytaste recipes at most meals.
Skinnytaste recipes helped Willa get off to a fast start
As many of us know, on WeightWatchers, every food has a point value. Options with the most protein and other slimming nutrients per calorie have few or zero points—and Skinnytaste recipes use low-point foods as their base, adding spices and small amounts of higher-point foods make them deeply delicious.
“I’m a cookbook junkie, and no one else does it like Gina,” says Willa. Gina’s books include point values for recipes, so Willa just chose whatever appealed to her—beef bourguignon, fish dishes, air-fryer chips—and counted it toward her allotment of 28 points per day. It worked like a charm.
Willa shed 26 pounds in seven weeks, her overall health improving and momentum building. She added walks and water aerobics. Plus, she truly loved the food. Her motivation soared. Did she ever hit a roadblock? Yes. A big one. It’s what prompted her to try a game-changing strategy.
Discovering the weight-loss magic of high-protein foods
When Willa hit a long plateau, she was a ways from her goal and not as spry as she hoped to be, “but I started to think, ‘Maybe this is as far as I can go,’” she says. Luckily her daughter Christin is a nutritionist. “She told me about the benefits of going really high protein for weight loss.”
Christin got her mom to aim for 140 grams per day. “Once you learn where the protein is, it’s easy,” says Willa, who added a morning protein shake and relied on dishes from Gina’s book, Skinnytaste High Protein.
What happened? Willa kept following the same WeightWatchers plan, but she began choosing a lot more protein within its guidelines. Once she did, her appetite dropped dramatically. She also immediately resumed losing weight. “I never plateaued again.”
High-protein foods also worked wonders for Skinnytaste founder Gina
Willa’s favorite cookbook was inspired in large part by the author’s own menopause journey. “I found myself not only gaining some weight but also feeling out of sync with my body,” shares Gina, 53, who has written seven New York Times bestsellers. “I felt sluggish, my memory wasn’t as sharp and I struggled to stay motivated.” She also noticed muscle loss despite regular exercise.
Like Willa, Gina found only a high-protein diet seemed to help.
“It was truly a game-changer for me,” says Gina, who set goals with help from a nutritionist. She aimed for meals with 30 grams of protein each that also emphasized fiber and produce, many of which became recipes in her new book. (You can check out Willa’s favorite chicken recipe from Skinnytaste High Protein and find even more yummy options at Skinnytaste.com.) “It’s been a journey, but I’m so happy to finally be at a place where I feel like myself again.”
Why high-protein foods make weight loss easier
There’s loads of evidence that, calorie for calorie, protein shuts down hunger better than any other nutrient. Why? Many protein experts believe protein’s amino acids—which are crucial to countless life-sustaining functions—are the main driver of our appetite and cravings. Eat enough protein and the drive goes away, says Satiety Per Calorie author Ted Naiman, M.D.
Protein also helps us maintain and build muscle that gives us stamina and increases metabolism around the clock. Dr. Naiman adds that since our ability to break down protein diminishes as we age, we actually need more protein to experience this effect as we get older.
So how much protein is enough to speed weight loss?
In a Duke University study, older adults in a weight loss program who aimed for about 1 gram of protein for every two pounds of body weight (or 125 grams daily for a 250-pound woman) kept muscles stronger and experienced double fat loss compared to a lower-protein group. But experts agree that’s just one example, not a magic formula.
Willa—who had already been getting a decent amount of protein during her plateau—saw best results when she aimed for closer to a gram of protein for every pound she weighs. Meanwhile, Gina found that getting a nice dose of morning protein and spreading intake evenly through the day worked best. Experiment to see how your body responds.
Willa, 79, says: ‘I have a new life’
All told, it took Willa about three years to drop from her high of 256 pounds to an ultra-healthy 145. She is now 79, has been maintaining for a year and is sharing inspiration on her YouTube channel. “I have energy again. That’s the huge, huge difference. I feel like I’m really living now!”
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