Was 260 lbs., Size 26
Now 130 lbs, Size 6

While walking along San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf in 1993, Olga Arias decided to stop and savor the view from the top of a low wall. "I pushed myself up -- and almost went all the way to the other side!" she says. "It was such a cool feeling to be able to do such a thing."

Only a year earlier Arias, 44, couldn't have accomplished the feat. At 260 lbs. and a size 26, the 5'5" executive assistant in San Francisco's Department of Public Works had trouble getting up off her couch. Once, while taking a young cousin to an amusement park, "she was unable to fit on one of the rides," says her sister Delia Arias-Cruz, 47. "She had to wait at the gate."

It was the kind of humiliation Arias was all too familiar with. The second of four children raised in San Francisco by Mexican immigrant parents -- Elias, 78, a retired laborer, and Celia, 73, a homemaker -- Arias says she was "always on the heavy side," thanks to hefty portions of such family specialties as beans refried in bacon fat; by her 20s she was a chronic binger. "Food," she says, "was comfort."

Attempts at losing weight -- Arias once went to an Overeaters Anonymous meeting -- failed. Then in 1992 "something clicked in my brain," she says. Arias, who enjoyed swimming, drove to a local pool 15 minutes before closing time. "I couldn't swim a lap without stopping to catch my breath," she recalls.

Undeterred, she returned to the pool day after day, eventually working up to 30 minutes of nonstop swimming. Inspired, she began walking and lifting hand weights at home; she also cut out fried and fast food from her diet, as well as alcohol, red meat and heavy desserts, all of which she still avoids (except for red wine or the occasional Scotch).

After two weeks, Arias was down 15 lbs. When additional weight proved harder to lose, she began adding different activities -- hiking, mountain biking and even surfing -- to her routine.

Today the 130-lb. Arias, who is single, grabs exercise wherever she can, whether it's using her lunch break to take a 60-minute walk or sprinting up three flights to her office. Sometimes, when she returns to her desk, she'll eat one of the chocolates she keeps there in a jar. "People say they don't know how I can resist eating them all," she says. "But there's no way I'm going back to where I was before."

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