THE OLD TRACI A YEAR OF HISTORIC FEATS

For much of Traci’s adult life, the mountaintop had seemed rather intimidating from the bottom. Ironically, her decision to make a lifestyle change came shortly after walking up a mountain in Georgia during a family vacation in January 2013. As she and her family followed a trail back to their cabin, Traci felt extreme pain in her lower back that left her immobile.

“The thing I remember most was seeing fear in the eyes of my daughter Libbey,” she says. “I felt ashamed that my child had to see me in my lowest of lows. I promised myself then that nothing like this would ever happen again. I was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.”

For Traci, that “sick and tired” feeling had plagued her since the late 1990s. At age 26, she gave birth to her daughter, Bailey Gable, and two years later, divorced her high school sweetheart, forcing her to raise Bailey as a single mother. Several months later, she lost her best friend, Kelly Wise, to breast cancer.

“Because I was raising a small child all by myself, I was no longer the number one person in my life. My life centered on my child, so I never really worried about my health and weight. Losing Kelly was hard because I knew her my entire life and always knew I could talk to her about anything. When she passed away, there was a huge void in my life so I filled the void by having a relationship with food.”

This unhealthy relationship continued even after giving birth to a second daughter, Libbey, in