Entertainment Tonight's charismatic correspondent MARIA MENOUNOS may spend her days and nights mingling with stars like CHARLIE SHEEN and PAUL WALKER but before she made it big, she was the typical college student who fell victim to the "Freshman 15" -- only for her, it was the "Freshman 40."On tonight's ET, Maria discusses her weight gain, her weight loss and her secrets for keeping the unwanted pounds off -- for good!
"I was eating mass quantities," she says. "I could eat almost a whole pizza by myself."
The brunette beauty shot up to 155 pounds in six months while attending Emerson College in Boston. She says moving from home to a dorm was partly to blame.
"I'd always eaten healthy, but when I moved to college my eating habits changed drastically." She reveals, "I was eating pizza at two in the morning and lots of it ...I wasn't receiving the home-cooked meals that I was getting back home so the weight was quickly gained."
Although she soon recognized there was a problem, she said it didn't concern her much because she was in college. "I had modeled before and done some TV and film work and I didn't mind getting to eat what I wanted for a small time in my life."
But the desire to compete in the Miss Massachusetts pageant is what eventually motivated her to lose the weight. "I had tried to lose weight here and there but they were lame efforts," she says. "When I lost my weight it was because I was ready to lose it and I put all my effort towards it." She adds, "I didn't consider it a diet. I just changed the way I was eating."
It took the talented talker a year to lose the extra 40 pounds, done mostly by limiting the tempting junk food she grew to love, including brown sugar Pop-Tarts. "I started cutting back slowly. Instead of six pieces of pizza, I'd have five and when that got easier I cut it down to four and would supplement it with a side salad."
"Five months later I felt my clothes getting big and I got on the scale and saw I had lost 20 pounds! I couldn't believe it."
This encouraged her to start exercising. "I did push ups and jumped rope. You don't need all of that expensive machinery to do it." Maria says another key to keeping the weight off is to never deprive yourself. "Even when I was dieting, I still had dessert, I just didn't eat the whole dessert, I ate only half. And instead of a whole bag of Oreos, I'd eat only three."
And another tip for people-on-the-go: The fast food drive-through can be an option -- if you know what to order! "I love Wendy's salads," she says. "I have about three a week!"
Maria does make it clear that she never really tried the fad diets. "I'd try them for a couple of hours but it just didn't work. For me it was a complete life change and it stuck with me because it's been three years and I haven't gained it back."
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