Kissimmee woman honored for 2023 transformation

Kissimmee’s Chris Malanowski says she had some “A-Ha” moments that led her to change her life.

“I picked up a 35-pound bag of dog food, and I said to myself, ‘I’ve got three extra of these on my body,” she said.

Malanowski had been to the doctor and had been diagnosed as morbidly obese. “It wasn’t obesity. It was morbid obesity,” she said.

Thanks to her work in a program, she’s earned an award for her transformation.

Malanowski said she’d struggled with her weight most of her life.

“I was a member of a [weight loss] group when I was 11 or 12 years old,” she said. “I’ve been a member of Weight Watchers. I’ve done some [prescribed] pills. I’ve even done the 500-calorie-a-day doctor-supervised diet. And I did lose weight.”

But Malanowski says, for her, keeping the weight off was much more difficult than losing it in the first place.

“Here’s the clincher,” she said. “You need a support group, because you’re not going to keep it off. And it doesn’t matter what your support group is: Weight Watchers, TOPS, Overeaters Anonymous, the church ladies down the street, or whatever.”

Malanowski chose TOPS (Taking Off Pounds Sensibly), a nonprofit weight-loss support and wellness education organization, for her weight loss journey expecting, she said, to fail.

“After all, everything else I tried did result in a very temporary weight loss, so why should this succeed?”

Shortly after she joined TOPS, the pandemic began. “I think the national statistics said that during the pandemic, when everybody was at home and had nothing else to do, the average weight gain was like 15 to 25 pounds,” Malanowski said. “The exact opposite happened to me. I started cooking at home. I didn’t stop at the McDonald’s or Wendy’s. I didn’t go to the grocery store and pick up a chicken or whatever the heck you can do. I started cooking at home, and when I cook, I cook for myself. I don’t cook with sugar, and I do not cook with salt.”

Once the pandemic restrictions began to be lifted, Malanowski added exercise to her new healthy routine.

“When they started opening the outdoor pools at 25% capacity. I started working out. Then they started opening our gyms at 25% capacity. And I wore a mask, and I started working out. I work out two and a half hours every morning. It’s just a priority in my life,” she said.

Those new habits and priorities, along with the support of her local TOPS group, have paid off. In the last three and a half years, Malanowski lost 131.4 pounds.

“When I became regularly obese, I felt so good,” she said. “And then when I went down to overweight, I said ‘Boy, I’ve never been happier in my life to be overweight!’” Each year, TOPS honors a woman and man who have officially recorded the largest weight loss from their starting weight at the end of the year, regardless of the time taken to reach their goal. Malanowski was honored in April as the 2023 Florida Queen.

Malanowski said she’s grateful for her “A-Ha” moments.

“You’ve got to have something to get you,” she said. “Some people will have heart attacks or strokes, and they still won’t wake up. But we can’t set priorities for anybody else. You have to set them yourself. And you can’t do it for somebody else. ‘Well, my husband will love me if I lose 50 pounds.’ I’m sorry, honey, if he doesn’t love you now, he’s not going to love you when you’re skinny. You’ve got to do it for yourself and for health reasons. That’s it.”