Jennifer Brown has more endurance than she’s ever had before. The 42-year-old from Fort Dodge, Iowa, is preparing to run a marathon, she’s lost 189 pounds, celebrities are giving her shoutouts online, and she’s learning to focus on the positives in life.

This reality is a far cry from Brown’s former lifestyle, and the future she’d once imagined for herself. The mother from Iowa can distinctly remember the feeling of defeat when it came time for the annual physical fitness tests in grade school. “I remember being the kid that would walk with the PE teacher, because I just consistently said, ‘I can’t. There’s no way. I know I can’t run a mile in 15 minutes like you’re supposed to. And so, I’m not even going to try,’” Brown recalls to TODAY.

That summed up most of Brown’s feelings toward exercise and fitness for most of her life: She’d never be able to do it, so it wasn’t worth trying.

Brown’s days were mostly sedentary. Before having kids, she and her husband had a steady routine of staying in to watch films and drinking on the weekends. “We’d party a lot,” says Brown. “We would drink ’til 2 in the morning because that’s what time bars close here. And we would socialize.”

Then, they’d follow that up with a trip to Hardee’s, the 24-hour fast food restaurant. She never felt great the following morning, so she’d address the feeling with more heavily processed foods, and the cycle continued.

How Brown broke this cycle is a story of stamina — the mental and the physical kind. Plus, the self-awareness that comes with making a change and the people you’ll inspire along the way.

She didn’t know this yet, though.

The turning point

Things changed when Brown turned 37, and she weighed 348 pounds. She was a parent to two children, and her husband had just dealt with serious health issues.

“I realized I needed to really take an active interest (in my health),” Brown says. “I just continuously gained a little bit of weight every single year until it got to a point where I’m like, ‘OK, I’m at my heaviest. I’ve got to do something different.”

While Brown had been overweight since she was 6, this was the first time she’d worried about the impact it had on other people, particularly her youngest child, who was 10 at the time. “I was really honest-to-goodness worried that I wasn’t going be able to take care of him,” she says.

Something clicked when she was walking the family’s new puppy at the park. A feeling of contentment washed over Brown as she spent time outside. “There’s fresh air. And it’s sunny. And it feels good. And I’m outdoors,” Brown recalls. “It was such a pure feeling.”

And she wanted to feel it again. “It’s time,” she thought. “This is it.”

First steps

Brown eased herself into her new lifestyle. “I started walking and just slowly changing my diet and adding more water in and focusing on just being a better version of myself. And I quit drinking alcohol,” says Brown. In three years, she lost 100 pounds. But then things stalled for eight months.

Proud of the weight loss she’d achieved on her own, she didn’t want to ask for help. “I’m telling myself this whole time, ‘I can do this obviously. I’ve put forth the work and done this.’ But I went through eight months of time, and nothing was happening,” says Brown. So, she went to the doctor.

Brown presented the doctor with her food diary and exercise data from her Apple Watch. She could kickstart additional weight loss with the weight loss medication Mounjaro, her doctor told her. She was reluctant at first, but by continuing her diet and exercise routine, along with the medication, Brown lost 90 additional pounds in 11 months.

New goals

With the work toward one major goal in progress, Brown, once again, wanted to keep that feeling going. Before she started the medication, she set a new goal.

“I started the mile-a-day challenge for myself,” says Brown. “I was like, ‘OK, for 30 days, I’m just going run one mile, no matter how long it takes.”

That first mile took 20 minutes. Brown remembers breathing heavily and feeling “like I wanted to die,” she says. By the 30th day, however, Brown was running a 14-minute mile — she was officially running at the pace she once told her PE teacher she never could. “I was doing that at age 40 when I couldn’t do that at age 8 or 9 or 10. So, it was like, ‘OK, this is awesome.’”

As the Iowa winter set in, she and her husband bought a treadmill on clearance so Brown could train indoors. Then she upgraded to a Peloton. She’s now on a 110-week streak on the machine’s live class workouts, and she discovered her favorite Peloton trainer, Kirsten Ferguson, whom she got to meet in person this past April.

As Brown’s dedication to running continued, she filmed her progress and shared it on TikTok, where it went viral in 2022. “I love the fact that it has really gotten the attention of people who inspire me because that’s crazy to me. Ludacris commented on my video,” says Brown. Octavia Spencer follows her, and Jennifer Garner liked the video, as did Gretchen Rossi of the “Real Housewives.”

“As time went on, obviously my body changed, and I progressed into getting faster, better, stronger, and I’ve just continued to share that,” she says.

One follower credits her with motivating them to lose 95 pounds. “I’m still sharing for myself, but it’s gotten to a place where I just feel compelled to keep pushing into it,” says Brown. “Because it’s become a passion to help others by sharing my content.”

Her social media platform also introduced Brown to her next challenge. In addition to the marathon she’ll be running in Iowa on her 43rd birthday, she’ll participate in Relay Iowa, a 339-mile relay across the state, with 12 people she connected with on TikTok.

A mindset shift

Brown started this journey to address her weight, but it has led to a change in her mentality too. “I used to have a very negative mindset,” says Brown. “I would always think the worst in every situation, and I’m still guilty of letting myself fall back into that habit. But I’ve adopted a lot of coping mechanisms in order to correct all that.”

Brown now often tells herself: “Nope, we don’t do that anymore. We think (positively). We put forth the best effort and we don’t project into the future. And we don’t create situations in our head.”  

Leaning into positive affirmations and listening to people speaking about achieving hard things online has reduced her stress levels significantly.

She still finds herself marveling at the fact that she’s that motivational voice to others, but then she remembers what she’s achieved in the last six years and snaps out of it.

“I can be a positive force in the world, and I can be inspiring to others,” says Brown. “I’ve just decided that that’s how I’m living from now on.”