Mom Goes from Size 22 to a Size 2 to Inspire Her Daughter: 'I Had to Change'

When Johanna Eppley’s daughter turned 1 year old, the morbidly obese mom realized that her eating and exercise habits were setting a bad example and that she needed to make a change.

“She was starting to walk, and I was always tired. She was starting to eat real food and what I was eating was not something I wanted to feed her,” Eppley tells PEOPLE. “I had to change.”

Overweight all her life, Eppley, 32, a choir director from Marshall, Texas, decided to entirely revamp her lifestyle, and her life. Once 285 lbs. and a size 22, Eppley embarked on a healthy eating and exercise plan, and two years later, the 5’2″ woman is down to 137 lbs. and is now a size 2.

“To see myself as someone who’s visibly fit-looking is weird,” Eppley says. “But it’s also really cool. It’s neat to be that example for my daughter, which is why I did this.”

To get started, Eppley in 2015 connected online with like-minded people. She watched From Fat To Finish Line, a documentary following 12 people as they each lose an average of 100 lbs. and then team up to run a 200-mile Ragnar relay race. Eppley then joined the group’s Facebook page and started following inspirational Instagram accounts.

She decided to try running, beginning her training on a treadmill with the Couch To 5K running app.

“I started doing 5Ks and then got hooked,” she says. The following year she ran at least one race every month and ended up completing a 10K, 15K and half marathon.

“The community of overweight people trying to gain their life back through running was a huge motivation for me to keep pushing forward,” she says.

Meanwhile, Eppley completely changed her diet. She adopted the Whole30 diet, eliminating grains, dairy and sugar. She swapped out favorite foods like fast-food burgers and fries, chips and crackers, cookies and raw brownie batter and started eating steak and chicken, sweet potatoes, broccoli and Brussel sprouts.

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Within 16 months, Eppley had lost half her body size and encouraged her daughter, 4, to follow her now-improved example, she says. At age 3, Emma ran her first race. Wearing a tiny tiara, she completed a “Princess Dash” fun run and earned a sash and crown when she crossed the finish line.

Eppley’s next goal is to run a full marathon. “The 285 lb. woman who couldn’t run more than 30 seconds a few years ago is running 26.2 miles,” she says.

Her mantra, she says, is simple. “Do as much as you can do today, and then try again tomorrow and see what you can do then,” she says. “Each day you get a little stronger, a little faster, and little more brave. Then an amazing thing happens and one day you wake up and you have become the person you had set out to be.”