Sarah Whitlow didn’t recognize her own reflection.
It was New Year’s Eve 2017, and Whitlow, a mom of four, was standing in front of a restaurant bathroom mirror after dealing with a toddler diaper explosion. Whitlow’s husband was outside in the car, while she juggled the kids, but she didn’t even consider texting him for backup.
“320 pounds. Poor. Riddled with trauma. Popping Percocet when my kids went to bed. Married to a monster,” Whitlow captioned a recent Instagram post looking back on the moment she realized she had to change.
“I was going to save my life, and my kids’ lives,” Whitlow tells TODAY.com.
Whitlow moved her family into her parents’ home, including her husband, because she feared what he would do to her if they were alone.
“The littlest thing would set him off,” Whitlow says.“There’s no doubt in my mind that if we lived on our own, he would have killed me.”
Whitlow’s next order of business was joining a gym. At 320 pounds, Whitlow, who stands 5 feet, 3 inches, says her “self-esteem was at zero.” At the time, Whitlow was also battling advanced lipedema, a condition where fat tissue collects in an abnormal way under the skin.
“The first time I worked out, I got on an elliptical machine, and within 15 minutes I was having chest pain, so I got off and was like, ‘OK. We’ll try again tomorrow,’” Whitlow recalls.
With each trip to the gym, Whitlow was able to go a little bit longer. Not only that, Whitlow’s newfound confidence helped her to land a job.
“As I started to become my own person, the abuse just got worse and worse. My husband turned it into, ‘Oh you’re losing weight because you’re cheating on me,’” Whitlow says. “So the gym became our safe place.”
After Whitlow finished work, she’d pick her kids up from daycare and bring them to Crunch Fitness, which provides onsite childcare until 8 p.m. Whitlow’s daughter Emily, then a tween, began joining her mom in the free weights area.
“That was huge because Emily and I didn’t have a good relationship,” Whitlow says.
“I hated her,” Emily, 19, tells TODAY.com.
Emily says a big part of that had to do with Whitlow’s years-long dependence on opioids. Whitlow was able to break free from addiction after seeking medication-assisted treatment in 2018.
“When she was using, she was inattentive. She was also very unreliable, so I ended up having to parent my brother and sisters,” Emily says, noting that as a little girl she always had a baby on her hip.”
“I was neglectful. I neglected Emily’s needs,” Whitlow says.
It’s been six years since Whitlow snapped her post-diaper explosion selfie on a cold December night.
“Now I’m … 168 lbs. Financially stable. Healthy. Recovered. Divorced & thriving,” Whitlow wrote on Instagram.
Whitlow and Emily work out together every single day.
“We repaired our relationship in the gym,” Emily, who is studying to be a personal trainer, tells TODAY.
Whitlow has made a name for herself on social media as trauma survivor and lipedema advocate, and works a 9 to 5 job in sales and marketing. She left her husband in 2019.