Misty Shaffer has struggled with weight all her life. When her husband was deployed to Afghanistan for a year, the Leland, N.C., woman decided to use his absence to re-commit herself to losing weight so she could surprise him when he came home.

In the year that Army Spc. Larry Shaffer was gone on his second deployment abroad, his wife changed the way she ate. She switched to whole grains, ate mainly fruits, vegetables and lean meats, drank lots of water and controlled her portion sizes.

She also limited her food intake, going from eating about 2,000 calories a day to now eating about 1,200 calories.

Shaffer, who wore a size 20 then, watched the pounds melt away. At her heaviest she weighed 315 pounds, but she tipped the scales at 250 pounds when she started counting her calories in June. When her husband came home on Wednesday, she weighed 154 pounds.

She now wears sizes 7 through 9, she said.

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