Suffered in silence, Michaela McNut's mother felt her pain.

"I had low self-esteem and I felt alone and people would tease me on the school bus. I kept it all bottled up because nobody else understood what I was going through," said sixth grader Michaela McNut.

"I would catch her in the closet hiding, with food, crying," said Michaela's mother Mary Ann McNut.

Mary Ann took the first step a couple of years ago by losing weight herself.

Combined the mother-daughter duo has lost more than 150 pounds, and is now inspiring others.

Nine-year-old Sophia Coscia approached Michaela in the hallway at school and told her she wanted to lose weight.

"I felt like I finally had somebody to talk to. Somebody that understood," said third grader Sophia Coscia.

The McNut's are now helping both Sophia and her mother Maria make healthy changes by exercising together, reading food labels and portion control.

"Parents have to be involved. They have to be accountable to it," said Michaela's mother.

Dr. Denise Edwards agrees that weight loss is a family affair.

"We as a family need to work on making some healthier changes so we're going to try some new vegetables; we're going to try some new things. We're going to try to be more active as a family," said Dr. Denise Edwards, who runs Healthy Weight Clinic.

Dr. Edwards says that stocking the pantry with better food options is a place to start, and not to focus on the number on the scale.

"It's not the weight were worried about so much, it's the habits that create that weight," said Dr. Edwards.

"I wouldn't eat greek yogurt at all and then I tried some and I liked it," said Coscia.

Sophia says she used to get winded just walking to the mailbox, but now she runs.

"We have where we run laps around school and I said I want to do 100 laps so I was training for it and I winded up doing 104," said Coscia.

Coscia now takes giant strides and has an entirely different outlook on life.