TWO women. One counselled for anorexia and binge eating as a teen. The other swamped intermittently since childhood by weight gain and depression.
One lives in Mildura, the other in Culgoa, 70km south of Swan Hill.
They want to be fit and healthy, feel good and look good.
Separately, they seek change and help.
Their paths cross.
Now Mildura's Sue Heintze, 40, single, a body builder and online personal training company executive, and Culgoa's Kerry Mather, 50, mother of three, community shop manager, accessories business owner and farmer, are journeying together.
The story of their journey reflects the modernisation of the country woman's life.
Like many women who live in relatively isolated locations, Kerry Mather turned to the internet for social interaction, support and guidance in her battle to lose weight.
That's where she met Sue.
That's how she started with her online weight loss mentor in New York. Now she's blogging and letting others know that regardless of location, online help is available at the press of a button.
But Kerry's story also reflects the hidden personal motivations of a country mother and community leader.
A dynamic member of her small Mallee community who established a kindergarten and saved the local shop from closing, Kerry had always battled to keep her weight down, swinging from 83kg in her final year at school to 47kg at her lowest and back again to 107kg after her mother's death in 2006.
The battle since the age of eight became too much for Kerry at that point and she resorted to a gastrectomy, a drastic form of surgery, which effectively cuts two-thirds of the stomach away.
"I thought I just couldn't do all that again," she says now of her many weight loss efforts.
Kerry had first subscribed to Sue's online service in 2004.
A kind of online personal trainer, Sue had her own battles with eating disorders but found redemption in fitness and bodybuilding.
Sue started to help friends, established a website called Ideal Bodies Online and now runs a successful business from Mildura as an online personal trainer to people worldwide, from Dubbo to Japan and the Antarctic, advising them about diet, weight training and weight loss.
In 2004, Kerry's mother was receiving treatment for cancer and Kerry had been depressed for many years, probably post-natally since the birth of her first child who is now 17.
Her husband and the local doctor encouraged her to accept she was depressed. She went on anti-depressants and dropped to 76kg.
Counselling followed but life, as it does, continued to throw up challenges.
Her husband was mayor, she had three children, her mother (two hours away) had undergone brain surgery.
At this stage she contacted Sue again, who devised a four-week program and set Kerry up with her online mentor in New York.
Now Sue and Kerry are good friends.
"Kerry did really well until her Mum's death finally got to her. We all eat for different reasons and a lot of those reasons are not because we're hungry," Sue says.
"People (on weight loss programs) fall back into over-eating for comfort and once they've done that they feel they have blown everything and give up.
"Once you're into that mindset it's not as easy as snapping out of it."
Kerry is losing weight again now.
She continues to lift weights and work out at home, on a fitball and lifting dumbbells.
She and Sue are friends, probably for life, now, they say.
Interesting how a problem has soldered a friendship.
