A mother of four who said she tried more than 10 extreme diets across a span of 10 years has lost 84 pounds — after both surgery and starting a regular hula hoop routine.
Laura Johnson, 42, said she tried every "fad diet going" during her decade-long battle to shed excess baby weight, as SWNS, the British news service, reported.
During that time she said she tried Slimming World, SlimFast, Weight Watchers, juicing and calorie counting — with no success.
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Johnson, a police dispatcher from Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England, weighed herself every day in a bid to lose weight but said "nothing worked" for her.
Despite her best attempts, she tipped the scales at 224 pounds, SWNS noted.
Then a friend recommended she look into gastric sleeve surgery.
She had the procedure in the summer of 2022.
In over a year she lost 70 pounds, not just from the surgery but with the help of a weighted hula hoop, which she said she uses for 15 minutes every day.
Johnson — who now weighs about 150 pounds and slips into a slender size 10 — said, "I was so busy being a mom and doing shift work. It left me no time to focus on a diet and getting healthy."
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She added, "It got to the point where I didn't want to leave the house. I felt so big and I knew that wasn't me," as SWNS reported.
She said the surgery she went through was "tough" but overall said it's "been amazing" for her.
She said that now, she's active and that she "loves" hula hooping.
"I got a weighted one online from Amazon and I'm obsessed."
Johnson first became a mom in her early 20s, in 2001, she said — and found that the baby weight "dropped off her" easily.
She said the same thing occurred when she had her second child in 2003 and her third in 2009.
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Then, she said, "I had my fourth baby at age 32 in 2013 — and something was different. I couldn't shift the extra weight no matter what I did."
Among the things she tried were classes and aqua aerobics, she said.
But "it was so hard to commit to anything long-term though because of my job and having four kids."
She also stopped smoking in October 2011, she said — noting her sweet tooth "went crazy" at that point as she reached for cakes and other sweets.
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Despite making sure her children were eating healthy, home-cooked meals, she said she herself often relied on processed snacks and ready-made meals.
What turned her around, she told SWNS, was an invitation to a girls' weekend away with her friends — which she declined, saying all she wanted to do was "stay at home and hide."
She added, "I knew my weight was controlling my life. I'm usually the life and soul of a party" — so something "had to change," she said.
After she had the gastric sleeve surgery, she lost nearly 30 pounds and said she's continued to lose weight since.
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She said taking up exercising — which includes her daily round of hula hoop work plus long walks and running — has made all the difference.
"I feel lighter in my head and feel free," she said.
"I no longer overeat and I trust myself to make healthy choices … I still treat myself every so often, but I just don't binge."
She also said, as SWNS reported, "Life is so much more fun now. I try things with the kids that I wouldn't have before."
She added, "I got my life back and I'm dancing on tables again like I used to."
