Capital Region Resident Authors Amazon Best Seller

"I've been overweight for as long as I can remember." That's how Amy Freinberg-Trufas, Author of Food: Eat with Ease Every Day starts her book. These aren't the words that you would expect to hear from a woman who is an on-camera actress and model.

Her book made its debut on the Amazon book scene in January, after becoming a best seller in presales. It now ranks among Amazon's top 100 best sellers in Healthy Diets.

Describing herself as, "a middle-aged woman with a 150-pound weight loss story," Amy shares with the world how she finally made peace with a lifetime of food addiction, learned how to maintain a healthy weight and discovered self-love without fad diets or intense workouts.

At 56-years-old, Amy stands tall at 5’11. A working wife and mother, she went from a size 28 to a size 10. She says the journey to discovery was not easy.

“Every New Year’s Eve I would say to myself, ‘this is the year I’m going to do it,’ and every New Year’s Day, I’d say: ‘you didn’t do it last year, you’re not going to be able to do it this year,’” says Amy. “The critic in my mind was out of control. It was a real point of sorrow for me. I knew I had to figure it out.” Her husband and son never pressured her to lose weight. “They said they thought I was beautiful as I was. I think it bothered them when I was hard on myself,” says Amy.

“One day, I got on the scale and it said 311 pounds and I was shocked,” says Amy, adding that she rarely went out to eat, “because people want to see what a 300-pound-plus person eats,” she recalls. “It’s a point of curiosity and it’s painful, because I know what’s going on.”

For her, losing weight was not a sprint but a marathon. It took a few years, not days. “It seemed insurmountable to me. I got through it with baby steps,” says Amy. “It’s a personal decision. At my weight, I was not happy and living well, so I knew I had to make a change.”

Unable for many years to find a comfort level of exercise compounded her struggle.“Being ‘morbidly obese’ as the doctor called it, has the word death right in it, so that was always in the back of my mind,” says Amy. “I had a lot of back pain and numbness on my left side from sciatica. Then I developed foot drop—my left foot didn’t articulate well because of the constant sciatic pain. My spine was compressed and painful.”

Amy was featured on The Dr. Oz Show: "Shocking Health Transformations" episode in 2021. On the show, Amy and Dr. Oz held up a large pair of pants she used to wear. “Dr. Oz said to me, ‘Tell me how you felt when you wore these pants.’ In that moment, I remembered how it felt to miss out on things. I remembered how it felt to long for something different.”

After more than four decades of suffering the mental and physical burden of obesity including stints at fat camps, failed attempts at fad dieting, patterns of destructive eating, fat-shaming, body dysmorphia, and self-loathing, Amy says that she has created a sustainable path to major weight loss, that instead of deprivation and punishment, finally felt like ease.

And, she's not the only one who feels that way. Indies Today Reviewer Jordan Ehmann writes: "Amy's genuine and relatable account will bring you to tears and move you to action."

She recounts how her father's deathbed words: "Make the life you want. Be happy," were the catalyst for her caterpillar to butterfly transformation. “Although that advice was for my son, Levi, I realized it’s as easy and as difficult as that," says Amy. "It was my ‘aha’ moment."

Amy says she is sharing her story with readers in the hopes that, "something resonates with you and you create your own reason for losing weight and feeling good."

Barbara Reina is the Developmental Editor of Food: Eat with Ease Every Day.