If the battle to reclaim your waistline is flagging, two women just might trigger the jolt of inspiration you need.

The weight-loss stories of Nazalee O'Hearn, of Solon, Ohio, and Peggy Sands, of nearby Rocky River, are among the 70 or so nationwide featured in a new Weight Watchers book, "Start Living, Start Losing: Inspirational Stories that Will Motivate You Now" (John Wiley & Sons, $22.95).

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'Start Living, Start Losing: Inspirational Stories that Will Motivate You Now,' features people who fought to lose pounds — and keep them off.

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Denial, alas, was their middle name. Did they own mirrors? Yes, but neither took note that their silhouette was burgeoning.

Even after gaining 120 pounds in three years, said O'Hearn, a Cleveland Clinic fund-raiser, "I still saw myself as that thin girl. I was very prideful, I suppose, and for me to admit I'd done this to myself was huge."

Her weight gain began while she was recuperating from tailbone surgery and wasn't allowed to run. She could have walked, but for an avid marathoner, that seemed wimpy and unthinkable. "It was running or nothing, and nothing won," she said.

But she kept eating like a runner: "I ate mindlessly because when I ran, I would just burn it off." After three months, she was 20 pounds heavier and a confirmed couch potato. And so it went. Her eureka moment came when her slacks waistband ripped, and ripped again and again. And she kept returning to the Nordstrom seamstress for repairs.

She weighed 272 pounds when she joined Weight Watchers. She learned to eat properly and lost almost 130 pounds. She's kept it off three years. "I love food. It's so not the enemy. I love pretzels so I went and found pretzels made of spelt, with protein."

O'Hearn, 37, also had to accept that the gray zone between marathon runner and couch potato was acceptable. She rides a stationary bike an hour a night and allows herself two days to rest. "I never did that before. Now I'll walk and listen to how my body is feeling."

She became a Weight Watchers leader eight months ago. "The first two minutes of class are critical," she said. One week's opener was asking what bad habits they'd recommend to people who needed to gain weight.

" 'Don't eat vegetables. Eat at 9 p.m. Don't exercise. Don't assert yourself with food pushers.' The list went on and on," she said.

"The weight issue is digging deep to the roots of habit. I can help with the food plan and guide them down the river of self-discovery, but only they can do the soul-searching," she said.

A special accounts manager for an insurance agency, Sands, 57, gained her 50 pounds of fat the old-fashioned way — slow and steady, about 2 pounds a year from her mid-30s. The gradual gain, from a size 8 to size 16-18, failed to trip an alarm.

But a trip to a family wedding in Lake Tahoe was an epiphany. "I knew I'd hold (the family) back when we went hiking because I was the most out of shape. The elevation made it tough, and I was a smoker, too."

She joined Weight Watchers and made it a point to avoid sitting by "the whiners," she said. " 'It's so hard to eat fruits and vegetables,' they'd whine. Losing weight is just paying attention. If I wanted a cheeseburger, I'd make a quarter-pounder at home with low-fat ground beef." She eliminated junk food in the house and always has grapes, strawberries or cantaloupe at home to quiet nervous-eating impulses.

And Sands adopted a mantra: "Happy hours are occasions for friendship, not eating." She substitutes light beer for martinis, her previous drink of choice, and takes the edge off her hunger with a healthful snack. "I keep reminding myself, 'I'm not here for the food,'" she said.

After she lost 10 percent of her weight she took up bicycling, joined a riding club and took her first long-distance trip. And she quit smoking. Last year, she bicycled 2,600 miles.

"Losing weight wasn't easy," she said, "but it was not as hard as quitting smoking."