The 31-year-old wife, mother of a baby girl and owner of a Curves gym in Edison - who has been featured in weight-loss and wellness segments on TV's "The Rachael Ray Show" over the last seven months - admits she may have been a bit chubby as a child, but her real battle of the bulge began as a pre-teen.

"I was always on a diet, ever since I could remember," Tuma, a Freehold resident, says. "When I got to sixth grade - when you're able to control your own (food portions) - then I started to gain, but I would notice it, so I would go on a diet. ... I was always in extremes; I would lose weight, gain weight, lose weight, gain weight."

Things didn't get any easier as she got older.

"I remember my (Colonia) High School prom," Tuma says. "It was a huge deal to get down to whatever size I was - maybe a 12 or 14 - like losing that weight was major for the prom. (But) as soon as prom was over, I gained it back."

By the time she was pursuing a bachelor's degree in communications at Monmouth University, her attitude about her weight changed.

"That was the end," she says of that period of her life. "I said, "I'm sick of dieting. I'm not supposed to be thin. It doesn't matter.' And I started to gain, gain, gain, gain."

The "freshman 15"? Fuggedaboudit, Tuma says with a laugh.

"Mine was like the 'freshman 50' and 'freshman 60' and then '70,' " she clarifies.

In hindsight, Tuma says her issues were more about not knowing how to live well and make healthy food choices. She recalls trying a wide array of diets over the years — no carb, L.A. Weight Loss, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, Lean Line — but each had basically the same effect on her body.

"All of them to some degree worked for me," she admits. "As soon as I would say 'I'm sick of this,' I would go off completely and just eat whatever and gain the weight back."

Tuma says her favorite diet of all was the Deal-a-Meal plan, which required her to rely on a series of food cards she would deal out each morning.

"Deal-a-Meal was exciting to me because I could wake up and find out what I was eating for the whole day," she says, laughing. "It would tell you what you were having for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I'd wake up and be like, 'C'mon, bacon!' "

During this time, Tuma remembers how she steered clear of clothes shopping because she was too embarrassed about her size.

"I used to avoid Lane Bryant, which actually has really cute clothes," she says. "Because of my own problems, I wouldn't go in. I would order men's clothes from the J.Crew catalog just to avoid that.

"Isn't that terrible?"

Shocked into reality

It may not have been evident to her right away, but years of yo-yo dieting was taking a toll on Tuma's health. By the time she was 22, she had reached 260 pounds — her heaviest ever. Yet as unhappy as she was with her body, it wasn't the weight that got her seriously re-evaluating her lifestyle. That turn-about came when she collapsed at Edison's Menlo Park Mall.

"I didn't know what was wrong with me (but I thought) 'I must need food,' " Tuma recalls. "I had a chocolate chip cookie and a glass of milk so fast. I scarfed it down and felt better. And at that point I'm like, 'OK, something's definitely wrong with me. This is not normal.' "

Tuma was right — it wasn't normal. Doctors diagnosed her as borderline diabetic and recommended that she lose 80 pounds immediately and go on glucophage, a medication prescribed to control high-blood sugar.

While Tuma says she was alarmed by the news, she decided to forego the medication and make some dramatic changes in her life.

"I don't know if this is the best advice, but I said, 'Let me try to eat well,' and I felt better," she says. She declined to take the glucophage. Instead, she enlisted the help of her brother, Rich Tuma, the owner of Elite Fitness Center in Clark and the 2004 World Natural Bodybuilding Federal World Mr. Fitness champ, and began doing something she'd never considered before: strength training.

"I always went to cardio, thinking that was the way to lose weight," Tuma says. "But (Rich) helped me."

It wasn't long before she started losing weight. She says the change in how she felt physically was immediate.

"In that first year, I lost a bunch of weight — probably about 70 pounds or so, maybe even more," says Tuma. The remaining pounds came off gradually, she says, over the next year or more. She stresses, though, that her focus was never on losing a particular amount of weight. "It was never like a mission. I felt really healthy as soon as I started living that way, and the weight just kind of came off."

Unlike all of the earlier attempts she'd made to lose weight, Tuma says her changed attitude made the difference.

"At the time, I would have a salad and say to myself, 'OK, food is fuel. This is great,' " she recalls. "Now I love it. ... It was much easier than it had ever been because I had committed to changing my mindset about it."

Time for more changes

During this time of internal and external transformation, Tuma says she also rethought her career choice in the pharmaceutical industry.

"I was changing my life, so it was a natural progression to go into helping people because I was helping myself," she explains.

Tuma says a co-worker piqued her interest when she mentioned she was working out at a Curves facility in Pennsylvania. (At the time, there were no Curves in New Jersey, Tuma says.)

"I said, 'How can you work out in half an hour? It doesn't make sense,' " she says. She went, though, and was amazed at how thorough the workout was.

She encouraged her mother, Laura Tuma of Milltown, to visit Curves, too, to treat her tendonitis. After a few months of making the hour-long drive to Pennsylvania and seeing fantastic results, Tuma says she and her mother decided to open their own franchise.

The Edison Curves — only the second in New Jersey at the time — opened in 2001. Tuma says once it was up and running, she started doing lectures for members on wellness. Her budding coaching business blossomed from there, and she was hired to conduct corporate lectures.

At the same time, her personal life was blooming, too. She met the man she would marry, Michael Young, a chef at a catering business across the street from her brother's gym in Clark. In 2004, Tuma recruited Young to cater her lectures, and together they launched the "Lunch 'n' Learn" program, which teaches schools and businesspeople how to make healthy food choices. Tuma also made a DVD, "Diets Don't Work," in which she espouses the importance of physical wellness over weight loss. She currently appears on 1450 WCTC-AM every Monday afternoon during "The World According to Judith" show for a 15-minute segment called the "Dose of Inspiration," and has successfully lost the weight she gained during the pregnancy of her now 1-year-old daughter, Millana.

And that is why — nearly a decade later and 125 pounds lighter — Tuma felt she uniquely qualified to coach and motivate others with weight issues when "The Rachael Ray Show" came calling.

Good timing

Tuma calls her appearances on the hit talk show a "fluke."

She was perusing the Craig's List Web site one day last fall looking for wellness coaching opportunities, she says, when she stumbled upon a listing that fit her perfectly.

"It said, "Are you a person who lost a lot of weight? Do you like to help other people lose weight?' And I'm like, 'yes' and 'yes, I do!' " Tuma recounts. She sent a reply, not knowing who had posted the anonymous ad. The next day, a representative from "The Rachael Ray Show" called, telling her she wanted Tuma to come to New York City to meet with producers.

That was on a Tuesday in early November. By Friday, Tuma says a crew was at her home filming footage, and the following week she was on set taping "The Weight-Loss Challenge," a new segment on the show.

Since then, she's been featured three times on the show, including a challenge update and a segment on how to avoid gaining weight during the holidays. She believes it's important that women feel good about themselves and not believe that losing weight will boost their confidence and resolve all of their problems.

"What we do to ourselves as women ... 'Does my butt look big? Does this make me look fat?' I used to say that all the time," she says. "Why am I doing this to myself?"

Tuma says that it took a while before she realized that she had to believe in herself before she could lose any weight. She set out to find quotes to inspire her and give her confidence. One quote that she especially loves is stenciled on the wall of her Curves gym to inspire all of the women who go there:

I look attractive in anything I wear. I am easy to love. I am so much more interesting than I think. I have really got it together. I am on the verge of greatness. I create my own destiny. I am successful at life. I make things happen. I know who I am. I am a positive individual. I express myself. I am my own hero.

More information about Jennifer Tuma's coaching and other services is available by visiting www.findbalanceinyou.com.