Lisa Wallace of Lynwood, Ill., was determined to lose weight.

"I was going to get the weight off and I kept my mind focused on that," says Wallace, an accounting clerk at Alion Science and Technology. "I lost that weight and I'm going to keep on and lose more."

Wallace decided to drop 40 pounds when her doctor told her she need to lose weight. She had attempted to shed pounds before but nothing had ever lasted.

"I have tried every diet from Slim Fast to diet pills and nothing worked," she says. "I'd lose but then I'd put it right back on. When I stopped taking those pills as soon as I got on the scales, I'd find that I had gained it back."

Crediting the Jenny Craig plan for helping her lose weight and maintain that weight loss, Wallace describes feeling a whole new way about herself.

"I feel lighter, I can walk longer, I'm not out of breath," she says. "I can do more things, I can multitask now."

There are other pluses as well.

"I had to buy a whole new wardrobe and I'm still buying it," she says. "My husband was saying you look good, but if you keep wearing those big clothes, you look like you'd been sick."

Besides losing weight, Wallace says that the Jenny Craig plan has taught her to eat right as well.

"Even now, if I decide to eat something with my husband or we're having something over the weekend, if we're having guests, I'm always going to cook the right food for me," she says. "I stay away from the wrong kind of food. Even if I eat something that's not in my plan, I eat small portions. They have taught me a whole lot. Their food is delicious. To eat right and the food taste great, you can't lose. I don't even look at it as a diet anymore, I just look at it as eating right."

Besides eating well, Wallace also has incorporated exercise into her daily routine. She gets an hour lunch at work and spends 45 minutes of that walking on the treadmill and then eats her lunch and gets ready to go back to work in the remaining time. It takes discipline, but Wallace likes the results.

"I was showing a co-worker today a photo of me and she asked me who that was in the picture," Wallace says. "I told her it was me before I lost weight and she couldn't believe it."

Age: 45

Height: 5'7"

Weight: 153

Pounds Lost: 34

How long it took to lose it: 7 months.

Clothes size: 18 to 6

The Workout: walking on the treadmill about 45 minutes a day

The Diet: Jenny Craig

Tip: Know where you want to be and know how to get there; if you put your mind on what you want, there's no way you can't do it.