"Growing up overweight has a really negative effect on your life," says Shari, who weighed 210 pounds at her heaviest. "I couldn't play a lot of sports. I couldn't go shopping at the same stores as my friends." Now 22 years old, Shari admits that cooking was always a chore and that she payed no attention to portion control or nutritional information. "I would just grab the easiest thing there was, throw it in the oven and just cook away." When her size 18 pants no longer fit, Shari knew it was time to make a drastic change.

After seeing how much fun Rachael had cooking on her show, Shari decided to give it a try and picked up a few of her cookbooks. "I started learning how to do calorie counts on those recipes so I knew exactly what I was eating," she says. In addition to making three or four of Rachael's meals a week using fresh ingredients and monitoring her portions, Shari began an exercise program of running and toning. Fifteen months later, she had dropped 95 pounds! "I can't believe the change!" says the ecstatic Shari, who went from a size 18 to a 2. "I'm blown away by how much weight I've lost. I feel healthy now. It's given me a whole new outlook on life. I consider Rachael Ray to be the person who changed my life. I figure now that I've done this, there's nothing I can't do - there's no challenge that I can't overcome!"

Click here for some of Rachael's figure-friendly recipes!