Love t y ze
One married couple’s journey from fat to fit
ELEVEN years ago, when Sharee Samuels, then Sharee Hansen, was 16 years old and weighed more than 250 lbs., her boyfriend told her he was concerned about her “health.” She took his comment as a dig at her figure. They broke up soon after.
“It didn’t feel good,” Sharee, 27 and a resident of Stanwood, Wash., tells The Post.
After another horrible breakup in her senior year of high school, Sharee took some time off from dating to focus on herself and her fitness, which she documents in her new book, “A Funeral for My Fat: My Journey To Lay 100 Pounds to Rest” (Skyhorse Publishing, out now).
In it she describes how she hit rock bottom at age 17 and found herself tipping the scales at 256 pounds.
“I just never felt like I was the person I saw in the mirror,” Sharee, who wore a size 22 at that point, says. “It made me feel insecure, and I didn’t want to put myself out there when it came to dating.”
By her junior year of college in 2009, Sharee had successfully slimmed down to 220 pounds, thanks to Zumba and clean eating, but she still wasn’t looking to date — until she met a health-and-fitness major at the library named Andre Samuels.
“He was really charming and thought I was really cute,” Sharee says. And, like her, Andre, who weighed 260 pounds at the time, was looking to lose weight. He was impressed with her fitness goals and, a month or so into their relationship, the two started going to the gym several times a week together. She’d go to a Zumba class, he’d play basketball.
“It made working out that much easier and that much more enjoyable,” she says. “If I dated a superfit guy at that point, I’d see it as a motivation, but I don’t know if it would have worked out as well.”
Unlike Sharee’s past boy- friends, Andre never made her feel insecure about her body.
“I’m a girl, and you know, sometimes you wonder if a guy thinks you’re attractive, but he’s always been so supportive of me,” Sharee says.
Instead of talking about her figure, Andre compliments her on her fitness.
“He’ll say that he’s so proud that I can run faster than [he can], or if I finished a really grueling workout,” she says.
In May 2013, the 5-foot-8-inch Sharee reached her goal weight of 140 pounds. She and Andre got married three months later at the Edgewater Hotel in Seattle. Sharee wore a bikini in public for the first time on their honeymoon in Mazatlán, Mexico.
“At first I felt exposed, but now, if it [is] socially acceptable to wear a bikini [anywhere] in public, I’d do it!” Sharee says. “My husband loves it.”
Andre, now a 29-year-old assistant principal, also debuted a trim new body at the wedding. He’d shed 35 pounds since they first met. Sharee appreciates her husband’s physique, but is quick to note that they love each other at any size and fitness level.
“We have so many things in common, not just fitness,” says Sharee, who now works as a psychologist. “I didn’t marry him because he was my gym partner; I married him ’cause he’s the love of my life.”