Props to Miss South Carolina - 110lbs later

Bree Boyce, 22, shed nearly half her body weight before being named Miss South Carolina

With her beaming smile and flawless figure, Bree Boyce looks every bit the pageant winner. But the path she took to get there was anything but ordinary.

Before being crowned Miss South Carolina July 2, the 22-year-old lost 110 pounds — nearly half her body weight — over three years.

"I'm not on any kind of crazy diet; I'm just living a healthy lifestyle, and that's what I try to promote," Boyce told TODAY.com.

“That’s really what I want to focus on,” she told NBC News in an report that aired on TODAY Tuesday. “It’s not about a number on the scale or the size [of] your pants; it’s about being a ‘size healthy’ and loving yourself and having that self-worth.”Boyce will take her platform national when she competes for Miss America in January. Until then, she'll be traveling around the country encouraging others to get healthy by eating well, exercising, and believing in themselves.

An overshadowed child Self-worth is something Boyce struggled with for most of her life. The youngest of four, she says she always felt overshadowed by her siblings — two brothers and a sister, Tiffany. That feeling intensified when Tiffany, six years her senior, started competing in beauty contests.

"I loved going to the pageants and seeing how beautiful she was and glamorous she looked, but I also felt like I was kind of being dragged everywhere," Boyce told TODAY.com. "It wasn't that my family wasn't loving and supportive, because they definitely were. But emotionally, I just always felt like I was in the background."

To cope with her emotions, she turned to junk food, often sneaking around so that her family wouldn't find out.

“When I got my license, it really got bad,” Boyce said. “I would run to the local fast food joint, get something and eat it in my car.” Or she would eat entire pizzas and then stuff the boxes in the outside trash can before anyone came home.

What she got was a wakeup call: "He grabbed my legs and thighs and told me that it was time to lose weight," she recalled.  He warned that her knees and joints couldn't support her weight, and that she would have more problems in the future if she didn't slim down.


Read more here:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43676767/ns/today-style/t/she-lost-lbs-won-beauty-queen-crown?GT1=43001