Karalene Aday tried nearly every diet and even gastric bypass surgery to lose weight, but nothing seemed to stick.

The 58-year-old from Coon Rapids, Minn., tells PEOPLE she knew she had to make a change when “I had complete labs done and everything came back high and not right. And my doctor told me the whole answer to this is to lose weight.”

Complicating matters was Aday’s chronic bad back, which made exercise a challenge. She started to research different approaches: “I came across Mayo Clinic Diet and I’m like, ‘Wow!’ I don’t even think of it as a diet, it’s more of a lifestyle.”

She started the program in May 2024.

The program, she explained, offers 8 different, but easy-to-follow meal plans. She started with the keto-based plan, but swapped to “the simple plan, which is what it says — very simple.”

“For breakfast this morning, I had a cup of cottage cheese and some grapes,” she says of her current meal plan. “And then for lunch, I plan on having a salad with chicken in it. And for dinner, I’m gonna make portobello mushroom pizzas. And then fruit and vegetables are unlimited.”

The plan, she explained, along with the GLP-1 medication Zepbound to “stop the food noise,” helped her lose 80 lbs. in 16 months. “I’ve never been able to maintain it, and this is so doable,” she tells PEOPLE. “My labs are golden compared to a year and a half ago.”

Six months after she began the Mayo Clinic Diet, she needed foot surgery for a cyst on her toe but continued to manage the weight loss without workouts. Aday tells PEOPLE. “I do try to walk, but with foot surgery and my back and everything else, I have had very little exercise.”

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Even when she struggled with personal setbacks, she was able to stick with the program by finding support in Mayo’s Facebook group. “I have just had one challenge after another, and normally I would have just turned to food,” she said. But when her mom died, “I reached out to the Facebook group and said, ‘My biggest cheerleader’s not here.’ ”

The group kept her from giving up. “I had like 250 responses from other members just cheering me on,” Aday tells PEOPLE.

Now, she’s focused on maintaining her weight, but advises others looking to kickstart a weight-loss journey that “rather than looking at whatever diet it may be, look at it more as a lifestyle plan. It’s your new way for the rest of your life.”

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And, she says, “the weight doesn’t come on overnight, and it’s not gonna come off overnight.”

“If I could get myself advice back when I started, I would have told myself to just be patient,” she says. “Give yourself some grace and if you hit a plateau or you gain, just realize it’s just that your body adjusting, just keep going. Don’t give up.”