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Jacqueline Adan (30) was so proud of shedding a whopping 158 kg she decided to celebrate by going on holiday to Mexico and plucked up the courage to pose for a picture by the pool.
“I was nervous to take my cover-up off and to walk into the pool or walk on the beach. I still felt like that same 500 pound girl,” Jacqueline wrote in an Instagram post.
Although she overcame her nerves and decide to show of her new bod, Jacqueline was then cruelly body-shamed because of her “sagging skin”.
The blogger from California says as soon as she stripped to her bathing suit, she noticed a couple nearby “started laughing and pointing” and making fun of her.
But Jacqueline was determined to enjoy herself so she ignored the couple and made her way to the water.
“I took a deep breath, smiled and walked into the pool. That was a huge moment for me. I had changed. I was not the same girl anymore,” she wrote.
She hadn’t worn a body suit in years and had worked hard to kick the kilos.
According to Daily Mail, Jacqueline had been overweight most of her life and tried many diets, none of which worked for long.
But an incident during a trip to Disneyland in 2011 made her determined to turn her life around.
She was so large she found it hard to walk had to rent a wheelchair to get around the theme park – and she was left heartbroken when she couldn’t go through a turnstile.
"I was so embarrassed about how I physically could not walk and that my weight had become so bad that I needed a wheelchair to get around,” she wrote on her blog.
Just 25 years old, she decided there and then that enough was enough. She joined the Jenny Craig weight loss programme and in the first year she lost 45 kg. By May 2013 she was halfway to her goal weight, The Sun reported.
It was tough but she did it, she says – which is why she was so enraged that the couple in Mexico ridiculed her. They have no idea what she went through, she says, or the surgeries she has endured to get rid of her excess skin.
She has a strong message for all the people making fun of her.
“Yes I still have a lot of loose skin, I may still feel insecure at times, and yes I may still get made fun of.
“To be honest, yes, it bothered me. But I was not going to let people like that affect me anymore! I am not going to let what other people think of me stop me from living my life.
“They have no right to sit and point and laugh at me. That's why I smiled. It does not matter what others say or if they try to doubt you or try to bring you down.
“What matters is how you react to it. How you feel about yourself. Loving yourself just the way you are is hard. Others might not like that.
“That's ok. I hope you love yourself. Love your body. I hope you keep doing you and just keep smiling,” she wrote.
Sources: Daily Mail, Metro UK, The Sun
