From the sidelines to the finish line

WARWICK, R.I. (WPRI) -- Julie Lefebvre never ran anywhere and had to take naps to make it through the day. It was that draining to move her "morbidly obese" body.

“Those are ugly words,” the Warwick woman says. “But that’s what I was. Morbidly obese.”

But that was about 100 pounds ago. Now, she will be running toward a finish line in the upcoming Pell Bridge Run .

“I'm building my endurance,” she tells us during a walk and run on the West Bay Bike Path. “Hopefully for the race, I can run the whole four miles.”

The first step off 'the couch' was prompted by last November’s bridge run. Lefebvre, who works for the race’s corporate sponsor Citizens Bank, was a volunteer, handing out bananas at the finish line.

“I handed out maybe a thousand bananas,” she says with a laugh, adding that the expressions on the faces of the runners stuck in her mind. “They were happy. They accomplished something.”

She started by losing 25 pounds on her own but that was only the beginning. Lefebvre researched Gastric Bypass surgery, thinking it would help her control her addiction to food.

“When I had nothing to do, I would eat. Now, I walk. I run. I have other hobbies," Lefebvre says. "The surgery wasn't scary at all."

Since the operation earlier this year, she's lost another 75 pounds. Her goal is drop another 50 but the next step will be finishing the Pell Bridge Run.

“I never thought I'd run, my whole life. I never ran. I wouldn't even run to get the mail.”

Her battle with her weight started after she was born three months early and weighed only 2 pounds. She remembers that her parents were worried about her being under-weight but by her early childhood, the opposite was true.

“I know people would say things about me maybe after I left the room but really I was the jokester. I was the one that always said, ‘Oh look at me. I'll get my fat butt through the door’.”

She wanted to beat everyone to the punch line but she admits it troubled her to think she had given up on ever being healthy. But now, the jokes have stopped.

“I have endurance, I don't have to nap during the day. And I don't have to just take time away from my day to eat,” she says.

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