Adult Eagles-Ashley Appelhof (2014)

Appelhof Shares Her Weight Loss Journey With Millions

Year after year, one of the most popular New Year’s resolutions is related to health, whether exercising, dropping weight, eating healthier, or even personal growth. For social media influencer Ashley Appelhof, her own resolutions have captured thousands of followers. When Appelhof graduated in 2014 from Maple River, her immediate plans centered on attending college and getting a degree in social work. Today, she is helping others by publicly sharing her journey. With her 135k followers on Tiktok, 156k followers on Instagram, and 165k followers on Facebook, she has chronicled her weight loss journey as she has lost (to date) over 200 pounds. With celebrities from music, sports, and entertainment now following her content, a recent video garnered over 11 million views. 

“My weight loss journey has been pretty intense,” Appelhof admits. “I was up to  489 pounds when I started.  I lost a bunch of weight after my pregnancy, but during covid, I just started stacking on pounds, real bad. I actually ended up in a relationship where the guy kept telling me, ‘No, you can't go to the gym because people are going to be looking at you.’ And I'm like, ‘That's diabolical.’ So when I left him, the first thing I wanted to do is pop out and show him, ‘Hey, I'm gonna go to the gym. Watch this.’ And it quickly turned into: holy cow! I just had 15 pounds fall off in the last week. Like, when I first started, it was initially coming off like crazy. It wasn't making sense to me. In my first nine months, I lost 100 pounds completely naturally.”

Appelhof’s journey was far from easy. Just out of high school, her plans changed when she got pregnant with her son Daniel, and while she raised her son, she continued to search for her own happiness.  The key to her health journey began by addressing her own mental health. “I truly believe that everything comes in line once you start taking care of your mental health. I think it all begins with mental health. I think my mental health is what made me gain the weight, just as much as my mental health has been what has pushed me to lose it. The more I'm in the gym taking care of all of that. I'm the most happy, peaceful I've ever been in my life, literally between cutting off toxic relationships, going really into myself, and healing my own inner childhood stuff, and taking care of that has been huge.” 

She also recognizes that successfully meeting a New Year’s resolution means coming to it with the right mindset. “As far as health, too, I always tell people: it can't be a diet, like you can't just be on some quick fad diet type situation. This is a lifestyle.  If you don't embrace it and accept it as your lifestyle, I just truly don't foresee it being a continuing thing that works for anybody. So that's like something that I did, too, is I changed really small in the beginning. I still eat and enjoy everything that I used to before, but I just made switches to things. So for instance, I just made a chicken salad. And I love me some chicken salad. But instead of using all Mayo as my dressing, I would use half mayo, half Greek yogurt, so I can add extra protein and extra health to it. I can still enjoy sandwich or a burger, but I'll get the more lean meat, or I will use the Keto bread, or there's just, like, a lot of little variations that I switch to make it a more sustainable lifestyle, as opposed to being like, ‘No, you can't eat that. That's bad for you.’” Appelhof believes “consistency and dedication are going to get you above anything else. You will fall down and have hard days. There's going to be days where you're going to fall off track, but it's most important you pick yourself back up and continue. You have to hold yourself accountable and get back in no matter how difficult it is.”

Appelhof also credits much of her weight loss success to her relationship with her personal trainer. Initially, her meetings with John Nelson began virtually, with him coaching her through a phone while he provided workouts she could do right in her home. She credits his ability to be supportive and to also hold her accountable. While his workouts could be "excruciating," he also helped her to take the next big step.  “I eventually got more comfortable, and we started going to the gym. And he would train me. I'd be at Planet Fitness, and we were just set up. I have a Gym Buddy that is like a magnet that goes on the back of my phone. So I'd set him up, and he would train me from there, and then eventually went from doing that to doing live streaming. He would train me on live stream on Tik Tok. And so that kind of started bringing a following because it was giving him the ability to show his training style, but also giving people the motivation.”

While social media often receives a very negative stigma, for Appelhof, it also provided some unexpected benefits. Having felt “out of place” in high school and college, she found the online community “welcomed me with open arms.” She also encountered plenty of bullies online, but there was far more support to be found.  “It kind of really started to heal a piece of me, I think because I became less scared, I became more comfortable just talking to strangers and really not giving any care in the world on what they felt about me or what I had going on because they don't know me at the end of the day, they don't know my story. They see what I choose to allow them to see. So that's really kind of how it started initially.”

The first time one of her videos hit 300,000 views, Appelhof realized that not only was she receiving positive energy from strangers, but that she was also making an impact on them. 

“I think I'm exactly 860 days into my fitness journey.  Initially I was just like, ‘All right, well, I did it for accountability purposes.’ It was really so I could see my own transformation. Quickly, I realized people were following me and wanting to see the transformation. And I quickly realized I was inspiring a bunch of people. And once I realized that I was like, ‘You know what? As much as this journey is 100% for me, it really feels good to know that people are like, inspired and wanting to do better for themselves by watching me.”

Her success with social media also led her to make some positive changes in her life, including a recent move to Texas, where she is preparing for bigger and better things for her social media platform.. “Actually, social media was what initially brought me down to Texas. The first time I came to meet some of my moderators off of Tik Tok.” 

Her social media following has allowed her to monetize those views, even though she claims that income is “still very much just supplementary.” Along with monthly checks from Facebook and Instagram, she’s also become involved with product samples with companies ranging from clothing to meals. “It depends on how your video goes out. As far as the product side of things, I have one, it's a bodysuit from Feeling Girl–they made 100k sales off of just my video alone.”

From a young woman who “struggled with being bullied” to a social media influencer who is now self-motivated and “very protective of my peace,” Appelhof plans to continue her weight loss journey and also set some new goals for the coming year. “Ideally, I would love to be full-time social media by the end of 2026, but I've always dreamed of opening a food truck.” Her initial foray into social media centered around promoting her food business, Ashlynncakes. She explained how “ultimately, I would love to do catering someday, a food truck meal prep type situation for people, because that's where my true passion is, and if I can use social media to give that out, I would really like to.” With any resolution, it often comes to the drive to hold yourself accountable, so she empathizes with those that are about to begin their own journey, but with a bit of tough “John Nelson” tough love, “I am a single mom who has done this on top of that. Because moms, especially, they'd be like, ‘oh, I'm so busy.’ If you can make that one hour to scroll on your social media, which I know I am a social media person, so it's ironic to say, but you can find that hour, 30 minutes to go take care of yourself too. Self care is the most important thing, especially as parents too, we can't be losing ourselves in being a parent.”

And her 2026 plans for her social media followers? “This year, I'm going to move a little bit more off of just gym content. And I really just want to share my personality. I'm gonna start doing little daily vlogs, and I want them to know more of me and my story, not just like my gym content.”