MUSCATINE, Iowa — If they haven’t seen her in a few years, some people don’t recognize Muscatine’s Julie Kundel.

“I was always a little on the heavy side. My eating habits were not good,” said Kundel, 38, who has always loved starchy foods such as potatoes and bread and snacked on cookies and snack cakes.

Kundel has lost 100 pounds since she changed her lifestyle four years ago. She learned that it’s OK to have a baked potato – minus all the butter and sour cream that she used to load on top.

Kundel shed the pounds by following the Weight Watchers point-based program and walking four or five miles a day. She decided to change after years of accepting her weight.

She says her ability to sing well was something that made her feel better about herself.

“I was always self-conscious, but because I was able to sing well, I could hide behind that. It encapsulated me and that was always a positive thing people would notice and it took the focus off my weight,” Kundel said.

She participated in talent shows, church choir and trained at a Chicago opera house.

She was never picked on in school and was a very outgoing and active teen. But when she graduated from Kaneland High School in Maple Park, Ill., in 1989, her activity level dropped and her weight slowly climbed all the way through college.

Her husband, Steve, whom she married in 1994, always accepted her. They have two children, Lauren, 9, and Andy, 6.

“My highest weight ever was 286 pounds and that is sad to say,” the 5-foot, 5-inch tall nurse said. The weight piled on after her children were born but she was still complacent – thinking maybe it was the way she was meant to be.

Kundel is a registered nurse who works as an instructor at Muscatine Community College. She was a parish nurse for Faith United Church of Christ and has spent many years telling people things they should change their lifestyles

to become healthy.

“I worked in an ICU (intensive care unit) and I had to tell people who had a heart attack that they needed to eat a low- fat diet. I felt hypocritical, as heavy as I was,” Kundel said.

But that didn’t change her life.

On Easter Sunday in 2003 she noticed that her thigh had become purple, doubled in size and felt hard to the touch.

“I knew the symptoms but I had no idea (of) the extent of the problem,” Kundel said of discovering she had a blood clot. She knew that a combination of things aggravated the health problem, including a sedentary lifestyle, too much weight and a car accident that was likely the origin of the clot.

The clot was several inches long starting in her abdomen and stretching down her calf. She was in excruciating pain. A few days before discovering it she recalls having problems breathing and now believes that a piece of the clot broke off, went through her bloodstream and into her lungs.

“Luckily, I lived,” Kundel said. “The minute that somebody said that weight played a role, it became a problem. Up until then I lived in denial.”

But it still took Kundel 1 1/2 years before she made up her mind to change. She had to be ready, and on her daughter’s fifth birthday, Feb. 26, 2005, she attended her first Weight Watchers meeting.

Kundel said the change was not hard after she decided to improve her life. She found that two components of change were reducing portion sizes and getting up off the couch.

Slowly, the weight dropped off. Every time she dropped a pants size she bought new clothes and got rid of the old ones and her wedding ring is now two sizes smaller.

Kundel has more energy to do activities with her children. The whole family enjoys bike riding and she plans to ride the Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa this year with her husband.

“It took three years to lose 100 pounds,” Kundel said. “Right now I am not losing more weight but I’m maintaining, which is half the battle.”