530 Pound Weight Loss: 'Food Is Not the Enemy'

April 20, 2010— -- When Nancy Makin weighed 703 pounds, she could barely move, and for 12 years rarely left her apartment.

"Because of my appearance, many people rejected me," Makin said today on "Good Morning America." "Most did."

Makin lost 530 pounds without a radical diet or exercise plan or surgery, and seven years later, she's kept the weight off. The secret to her success? Makin said the relationships she developed online finally allowed her to be happy and to stop obsessing over food.

"Food is not the enemy," she said. "If I didn't allow myself onion rings once a month, I wouldn't want to live."

Makin writes about her journey in a new memoir, "703: How I lost More Than a Quarter Ton and Gained a Life." She said the community and support she found through her computer helped her heal.

"I could be judged on my inner beauty or my wit or my sensibilities about certain issues," she said. "I did not know that I was losing weight. I was happier."

As for how she got to 703 pounds, Makin attributed her weight gain to upheaval in her childhood and unhappiness as an adult. She said that the more food she ate, the more shame she felt, and nothing could stop the cycle. At her heaviest, she wore a skirt with a 108-inch waistband and missed her son's wedding and father's funeral.

"Some of that stuff was impossible to do," she said. "Others, it was just too humiliating. … It was very terrible, too traumatic, to go."

After she received a computer as a gift from her sister, Makin said she became inspired by the friends she made online.

"The anonymity of the computer gave me access to a world that would have just as well have left me alone, alone to die but I did not," Makin wrote in a letter describing her saga.