Medinah woman sheds half her weight and makes cover of People

After losing 122 pounds, Christina Cores lost one more thing this week.

Her voice.

The 22-year-old is a cover star of People magazine's Jan. 10 edition, after she lost nearly half of her body weight through old-fashioned diet and exercise.

And now Cores has been talking nonstop during an interview on the Today show, which aired Monday morning from New York, as well as during segments featured last week on Inside Edition, Extra and Entertainment Tonight.

“I can hardly talk, but it's worth it because this is a dream bigger than I ever dreamed,” Cores said. “It's just so much all at once; every day is getting better.”

Cores, who lives in unincorporated Medinah, weighed 240 pounds as a freshman at Hoffman Estates High School in 2002. She ate to soothe the pain of her father's recent death, a move to a new school district and taunts from her classmates.

But by age 15, Cores knew something needed to change.

“I started educating myself and started eating better,” she said.

Soon, she also started exercising at a local Curves gym — where she later got a job — and joined an online weight loss community called sparkpeople.com.

By early last year, she had slimed down to 118 pounds, now confident enough to compete in the Columbus Day Queen pageant in Chicago, where she placed among the top 10 finalists.

“After the pageant, all these men and women came up to me afterward and said, ‘You are so inspirational,'” Cores said. “Even the choreographer told me, ‘You should really get your story out there.' I'm sure everybody would love to get their story out there, but how do you go about doing that?”

So Cores went to her trusted support system, sparkpeople.com, where she wrote a letter about her story thinking it would get lost in someone's in-box.

“Logging in there is always so inspirational, and it helped me in my weakest moments,” she said. “I didn't even know who I was e-mailing. When I got a response within five minutes, I just about fell off my chair.”

Eventually the site's staff contacted People, who decided to feature Cores on this week's cover. Since her magazine and TV appearances, Cores said she's had nothing but positive feedback flooding in by phone and e-mail. Such a response, in fact, that she even set up her own website, christinacores.com, to communicate with well-wishers.

Cores said she isn't exactly sure what's next, aside from returning to work at a Schaumburg restaurant that serves only low-calorie, healthy food. Her fitness goal is to maintain her weight and figure, but she's still leery about joining competitive athletic events like triathlons.

There is one future stop, however, that she looks forward to most. Staffers at Hoffman Estates High School have invited Cores share her story with students at her alma mater — the place where her transformation began.

“All these major changes happened there, so going into my high school, where I cried and where I grew, will be even more special than the Today show.”