Ever since she can remember, Kaylee Bonnett has been overweight. Now 24, it wasn’t that long ago she reached her highest weight of 481 pounds.
“Kids and adults [would] say awful things to me in public and give me dirty looks like I was a circus animal,” she told Cosmopolitan.
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“Day to day, life was a constant struggle,” she says. “From worrying about if I’ll fit in this chair or if the chair will hold me, to trying to look nice and hoping that getting from point A to B doesn’t make me sweat my hair and makeup off, I was constantly on the defense.”
Not only did Kaylee struggle making as many friends as her peers, by her early twenties she was pre-diabetic with high blood pressure. Her doctors said if she didn’t do something about her weight she would suffer a heart attack or stroke.
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“I didn’t want to die,” Kaylee said. “You don’t get to go through life being 481 pounds.”
So, she opted for gastric bypass surgery. Before she could get the procedure, however, her surgeon told her she had to lose 30-40 pounds. Kaylee began eating a high-protein, low-carb diet and made it a point to walk every single day. She saw her surgeon’s required 30-40 pounds and raised it to a whopping 77 pounds lost before surgery.
Although it was painful for her to walk for the two weeks following her weight loss surgery in October 2016, Kaylee kept up with her exercise regimen and made even more changes to her diet: she cut high-fat foods and added sugars and goes to Crossfit three times per week.
At 312 pounds, Kaylee is extremely proud of her progress but knows she has more work to do if she wants to hit her goal of 225.
While the photos clearly indicate her body’s changes due to weight loss, one of the most astounding transformations is her face, which looks completely different.
“The reactions of others is what surprises me, and it helps me see the change,” she says of the transformation.
“The weight loss has truly changed my life,” she says. “I’m actually living life, which I wasn’t [doing] before.”
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