After years of battling food addiction, depression and substance abuse, Courtney Maguire decided to quit drinking and turn her life around.

After years of battling food addiction, depression and substance abuse, Courtney Maguire finally decided to quit drinking and turned her life around.

At her heaviest, she weighed 310 pounds.

“A lot of the time I was in denial of how big I was,” Courtney told the Daily Mail.

I avoided mirrors, scales, photos. Anything that forced me to see how much weight I really gained was all avoided.

Courtney Maguire

Courtney battled depression

Courtney, from Houston, Texas began putting on weight during university, when her binge drinking habits turned into depression and an alcohol dependency.

She tried dating but realized she wasn’t getting the kind of attention from men she hoped for.

“Dating was difficult, I was constantly rejected for my weight and the men who did want to date me, usually viewed my weight as a fetish,” Courtney explained.

In hindsight, the men she dated enabled her excessive eating habits and were never supportive of her efforts to lose weight.

“It would always hurt my feelings when guys would tell me they liked bigger girls because I felt like I wasn’t seen as the human I was, I was just seen as a bigger girl to them,” she said.

Her first efforts backfired

Desperate for an “easy fix”, Courtney got a gastric lap-band fitted in 2009, but it made her unable to digest food and made her throw up. 

Instead of losing weight, she gained an extra 40 pounds and had the lap-band removed in 2012.

“I would go to fast food places and order five meals and there would be some nights where I was able to eat it all, if I ate it right,” Courtney remembered.

I started to develop an even more intense compulsion with eating.

Courtney gave diet and exercise one last try but lost her motivation and her weight quickly climbed up to 310 pounds, and as a result, she was diagnosed with sleep apnea in 2013.

Courtney decided to quit drinking

The following year, after so many failed attempts at weight loss, Courtney made the life-changing decisions to quit drinking and to undergo a gastric bypass surgery.

“I was nervous about getting gastric bypass because of how much of a failure lap band was,” said Courtney. “But I was willing to do the work this time.”

Once she began to better understand her relationship with food, something told her she made the right decision.

“I needed something to seriously help control my obsession and compulsion with overeating and binging. I needed something to make it impossible for me to eat the way I used to,” Courtney explained.

“Waking up from the surgery, I realized how serious of a change this was. They had rerouted my organs for crying out loud.”

Within the first four months post-op, she was able to lose about 40 pounds.

It was the change she needed

Courtney completely overhauled her diet and started experimenting with different fitness classes.

“I eventually just went straight to weight lifting and lifting heavy, the results were phenomenal and I was amazed with how my body was turning out,” she remembered.

In total, Courtney lost 165 pounds and was left with an excess amount of skin which she became self-conscious about. 

So, she decided to reward herself and restore her confidence by getting a breast augmentation and abdominoplasty in 2016.

My transformation has entirely changed my life. I was so used to failure that this new success has given me so much hope in whatever I choose to do going forward.

Courtney Maguire

Not only did she lose weight and quit drinking, Courtney also returned to school, learned to ride a motorcycle, met the love of her life and has maintained 6 years of sobriety.

“The most important thing I’ve gained from my transformation is the love I have for myself,” she said.

“I worked really hard to get here and I am now so excited to see what I’m capable of doing throughout the rest of my life.”

More inspiring transformations: