WELCOME!

Welcome to Iron Romance. I am so glad you are here and want to share in this journey with me. My name is Julie Cruz and I am 33 years old. I am married to an amazing man named Jay and together we have 4 beautiful children. Tristan is our oldest and he is 9 years old. Rylie is 8 years old. Then we have twins, Corban and Kinsley who are 5 years old.

I was a very active kid and never really struggled with my weight until i graduated from High School and was no longer playing sports and could make my own food choices. I almost always picked fast food, and my weight began to climb. By the time i got married i was 180 pounds.






I struggled with my self esteem even then. 2 years after we were married we started having kids, and it was harder and harder for me to lose the weight after each pregnancy. Especially after the twins.
I would go through months where I felt really motivated, but it was usually from some sort of fad diet that i couldn't keep up with or sustain long term. Then 2 years ago i started my own Handmade business called House of Jars and it quickly became successful. I started it as a hobby and it turned into a full time business. I would spend hours in my shop working on jars and ignoring my family, my friends, and my weight. I watched my confidence fade as my weight packed on. House of Jars was stressing me out and that just made it all worse. I wasn't eating well, or very often, and I gained 50 pounds in 6 months. Then, in the Spring of 2015 my twin sister, Nicole asked me if I would audition for The Biggest Loser with her as season 17 was going to be a duo season

and it forced me to take a hard look at where I was. When i auditioned for The Biggest loser i was 260 pounds, the biggest i had ever been in my life. I weighed more that day than the day i gave birth to my twins... and i am talking BEFORE i gave birth to them, like while they were still in my stomach. Yeah. I had let myself go and it was time to face it and make a change. Things progressed quickly, and before we knew it we got a call from The Biggest Loser that Nicole and I were 100% finalists for Season 17 of The Biggest Loser. I couldn't believe it. I knew it would be hard. I would have to be away from my family for up to 6 months, and I knew trying to lose weight so publicly would be hard as well, but i was ready and so excited. It felt like a dream, or like we won the lottery. Was this real life? The day before we were supposed to leave to go to LA for casting finals I spent 5 hours bagging up every article of clothing in my closet that wasn't already packed in my bag, and gave it away. I was committed. I was ready. Then everything changed. Later that day we got a call from casting that said NBC had changed their minds about how big of a cast they were going to have and WE WERE NO LONGER FINALISTS. At first i was shocked, I had spent weeks preparing myself. Writing letters to my kids, endless at home videos, meetings with doctors, so.many.forms and I even closed my shop so i could be ready.. Just like that it was all gone. I knew in that moment I had a choice to make. I could continue making excuses for why I was fat and why i couldn't do it and why I felt so wronged (And i would be right, they really screwed us) OR i could pick myself up and do it on my own. I chose to do it on my own. That day, I unpacked the bag i had packed and put everything back in my (now bare!) closet. I told myself in that moment that I COULD DO THIS. I WILL DO THIS. I have no choice. The sad truth is i am morbidly obese. If i was willing to go on national television and share my story and bare my body in nothing but spandex shorts and a sports bra, then i better be willing to do it on my own too! No matter where I lost the weight, one thing never changed. I have to put in the work. No one can change my body but me. In the past I have always tried to lose weight on my own, thinking i could show everyone when I lost it and have this dramatic "reveal". But that never worked. I would give up because i had no accountability or real support. So this time, I decided to make my struggle public. I knew that there had to be more people out there, like me, who have tried to do this on their own and have always failed. So, Iron Romance was born. This is my journey. I want to share it with all of you in hopes that it will inspire you to do the same. To believe in yourself as much as I believe in you. We don't need a television show to lose the weight. We just need to make progress. To wake up every day and work a little harder than we did the day before. To believe in ourselves a little more than we did yesterday. To never give up. I promise to be real with you during this process. To show you my success, and to show you my failures. I will be taking progress pictures once a week, and will label them with my weight and the date. You can find them under the Progress Picture tab. This will be a long journey, but i know I can do it. I feel like i finally have the right tools to succeed. If you have any questions for me, Please fill out the Ask Julie form and I will get back to you right away. I am truly humbled and honored that you are here. Let's do this together!