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For years, Janet Allen believed that weight loss after menopause was practically impossible. At 55, weighing close to 300 pounds, she felt hopeless.

“I was in pretty bad shape. I could hardly walk a block — forget about walking up a flight of stairs. I could barely get myself up from the floor. Even getting out of the couch was hard.

"Looking back on it, it’s phenomenal how limited I had become,” she tells TODAY. “I didn’t think there was hope because the messaging you get is that women in their 50s and 60s can’t lose weight,” she says. “It’s supposed to be impossible.”

But a conversation with her nurse practitioner started her down a path that led

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