In 2016, I was a 34-year-old mom of four who wanted to feel better about myself from the inside out. After gaining 80 pounds in my last pregnancy and tipping the scale to over 230 pounds, I was depressed and didn’t feel good about myself—and I wanted my life back.

This wasn’t a new issue, though—I had struggled with my weight all of my life and lost many family members to diabetes and heart disease. I had no examples of what it looked like to take care of yourself from the inside out around me growing up. 

Setting Out On My Journey

A far cry from a healthy weight but determined to truly begin to make choices for myself that would help me build the life I wanted, I decided to document my journey of getting “back to myself” on social media. I created my first Instagram page (which was called @transformermom) to share my weight-loss journey. As I shared my personal weight loss journey with my friends, I quickly realized that many of them, like me, needed help with losing weight and establishing healthier lifestyle habits.

Read More: 5 Signs You’re Dieting, Not Making Healthy Lifestyle Changes

One thing I noticed as I got started: Pretty much all of the weight management supplements I tried to support my get-healthy efforts came with unwanted side effects and contained ingredients I found sketchy. I just wanted something to support me in establishing a healthier lifestyle and saying goodbye to yo-yo dieting. For a while, I felt pretty discouraged about supplements in general.

But then, I started researching herbs and plant-based alternatives that could be helpful. Was it possible to create a better alternative?

Filling The Need

In 2017, I officially set out to fill this void. I hired a team—including a nutritionist and laboratory—to begin developing a system of supplements that could safely support my weight-loss journey. The goal: to create natural solutions for managing appetite, promoting healthy metabolism, and boosting energy!

Within the year, Body Complete Rx (or BCRX)—a complete wellness system of supplements made with all of us in mind—was born.

We launched with three plant-based supplements to incorporate throughout a weight-loss journey: CONTROL, which helps to manage appetite, BOOST, which supports your metabolism, and RENEW, for a little extra oomph of energy—all of which are now available at The Vitamin Shoppe.

To date, thousands of women and men have credited these products with helping them reach their weight-loss goals.

More Than Weight Loss

For me, though, it isn’t just about weight loss. Instead, it’s about really creating a healthy lifestyle so that you can live. My stepfather passed of diabetes when I was just 15—and I lost my great grandmother, maternal grandmother and grandfather, and paternal grandmother all due to complications related to heart disease and diabetes. Living a healthier lifestyle could have prevented all of it.

Most consumers first encounter the idea of a healthy lifestyle and only start to seriously think about their health through wanting to lose weight. It is often not until that point that we begin to care about our bodies, what we consume, and how active we are.

Read More: 7 Tips For Staying Healthy On Your Busiest Days

Many people grow up surrounded by unhealthy habits, as I did, so it’s not a matter of getting “back to the basics,” but of learning the basics of wellness and self-care for the first time. Whether it’s learning to take vitamins or to drink water regularly, many of us—particularly in Black and Brown communities—never saw examples of healthy habits as children.

I wanted to help change that. That’s why Body Complete Rx is so special. I created this plant-based system to not only help jumpstart a weight-loss journey but to continue to support a full wellness journey and healthy lifestyle through plant-based nutrition and supplements—all brought to life by a Black woman with the customer’s specific needs in mind.

Samia Gore is an author, healthy lifestyle advocate, and the founder of Body Complete Rx, the first brand of plant-based supplements formulated by a Black female nutritionist with a complete wellness journey in mind, Gore and Body Complete Rx have been featured in Elle, Essence, Bustle, US Weekly, and more.