This issue, in our weekly showcase from our sister site Truly, we meet Dominique, who shares her amazing transformation
From amazing adventures such as skydiving to the simplest of things like going to the loo, Dominique’s weight had caused her a problem for as long as she could remember.
Growing up, she’d always been chubby and some days she’d find herself eating 4,000-5,000 calories a day.
By 2020, she weighed a staggering 30st and suffered from serious health problems.
One morning, she woke up and couldn’t even stand.
‘My back was killing me, and when I tried to stand, I fell to 34 the floor,’ she says. Afterwards, she just cried. And her doctor later confirmed that her back and knee issues were because of her size.
Things had got so bad that she admits she couldn’t even clean herself after going to the toilet.
‘I had to wipe a little bit, then get in the shower because I couldn’t do it,’ she confesses.
Now, she says she doesn’t understand how she let herself get that big.
Dominique’s mum Stephanie admits she had a role to play.
‘Anything you wanted, I gave it to you,’ she says. One day, Dominique went skydiving with friends, but the instructor told her she was way over the weight limit.
I had to do something about it, but I needed help
By now, she’d got so big that her weight didn’t even show on the scales.
‘That same month, we went to Las Vegas, and my friends wanted to go on a zip line but, yet again, they looked at me and said, “oh you can’t ride, you’re too big”, and it hurt,’ she says.
Her friends tried hard to keep her spirits up, but she was so down.
‘I had to do something about it and I couldn’t do it on my own. I needed help,’ says Dominique.
That’s when she went back to her doctor, who gave her information about gastric surgery.
In June 2021, she went for the procedure, which would reduce the amount that she could eat.
Afterwards, with incisions still in her stomach, she started walking for exercise.
Then, she got a trainer, started strength training and changed her diet.
It was then that the weight really started coming off.
She’s since lost half her
