Cruelly Bullied for Her Weight, Alex Perrineau Turned Her Life Around — And Lost an Amazing 142 Lbs.

Growing up, Alex Perrineau turned to food when she needed comfort, which happened all too often as a bullied teen.

“I’m a very emotional eater,” she tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “Anything that drove me crazy, I’d take out on food.”

Perrineau, 22, still tears up when she thinks back to the mean nicknames her male classmates would call her in high school, when she hit her highest weight of 310 lbs.

“The guys in school called me Fat-lex instead of Alex,” she recalls, crying. “That really hurt my feelings.”

Perrineau tried to keep her spirits up with body-positive quotes and phrases, but she was never comfortable in her body. Weighing in at 284 lbs. two years ago, Perrineau, a college student, decided enough was enough and joined Jenny Craig.

She immediately went from skipping breakfast, snacking on candy and chips throughout the day, and eating big greasy meals from Popeye’s or McDonalds for dinner, to relying on Jenny Craig’s breakfast burritos and chicken dinners.

“I learned to be cautious of sodium and how it can affect the body,” Perrineau says. “I wasn’t really aware of that. And then just kind of being more aware of portion sizes. When I first started Jenny Craig and I saw how small the meals are, that was a shock. It took some time to really get used to eating like that because I was used to eating a whole bunch.”

Now down 142 lbs., Perrineau sticks to eating Jenny Craig meals to keep up with her busy schedule.

“I don’t have to think about what to cook or what to do, it’s just there,” she says. “And I love being able to go in and talk to the consultants at Jenny Craig, and say, ‘Oh, this week I struggled with this,’ and they can help you.”

She now exercises six days a week, taking Zumba and ab classes, and found a surprising love for running.

WATCH: How Gillian Faith Lost 110 Lbs.

“I was inspired by this girl at the park that would run,” Perrineau says. “I couldn’t run at the time so I just told her one day that I wish one day I could run like that. And she said ‘Well, just start. Just start running and then you will just get better.’

“One day I just took her advice. It was hard and I was out of breath but I kept it up and then I was able to build my stamina. Now running is something that I do every Monday.”

For more on MacKenzie, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands now.

Perrineau still hopes to lose another 10 lbs. or so, but she’s already loving her smaller size.

“I’ll never forget when my mom and I went to H&M, and I was able to fit into size-10 bottoms,” she recalls. “It made me so happy. Just being able to shop at regular stores is pretty cool.”

Reporting by CATHERINE KAST