Mom shares her struggle to drop 156 lbs
Over the last few years, Casey Gemmel had been focusing her time and effort on raising her three kids. So much so that she didn’t even realize that she had been gaining weight.
“I knew that I’d gained a bit of mum tum over the years, but in my head it wasn’t that bad,” said the Perth, Australia mom in an interview with Kidspot. An avid cosplayer, she got a shock after looking at some photos of herself in costume and realizing that her weight had gotten way out of control.
“When I first saw the party photos, I didn’t think it was me. I looked nothing like Batgirl, it was more like ‘Fatgirl.‘”
Seeing those images prompted Gemmel to make a change. The first thing to go was fast food and using food as way of rewarding herself.
“We’d eat whatever we wanted and I often ‘treated’ us to takeaways. This continued over the years when I went on to have Willow and Xavier. I knew I was gaining weight, but in my head, mums were meant to be cuddly.”
Gemmel also admits to sneaking food, pretending to throw out scraps from her kids and then secretly eating them, or picking up something extra when grabbing fast food for the family and eating it on the car ride home.
“To be honest, I never really thought I ate too much or that badly. But I’d been putting way more in my mouth than I’d been acknowledging.”
But she was determined to get back down to a reasonable weight.
Using a costume that she really wanted to fit into as motivation, she began addressing her secretive eating habits and downloaded some exercising apps.
“At first, I had no faith in the app or myself. The first run I went on, I didn’t even last 30 seconds without getting out of puff. But slowly, I improved and that was enough to keep me motivated.”
Seeing results motivated her to keep going, swapping out takeout for lean meats and salads.
“Junk food was dead to me.”
That year, she fit into her Batgirl costume no problem — it was actually a little bit big. But she decided not to stop there.
Starting a Facebook page called Beautiful U, Gemmel has continued to share her weight loss journey, posting workouts, recipes and progress photos, hoping to motivate and inspire others.
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