Lisa Jones always considered herself to be fit and healthy, but a glance in the mirror told a different story.
The mother-of-two struggled with her weight for years, with various diet and exercise regimes never have any lasting success. The weight never shifted, so she settled for being the big ‘fit’ girl.
Then a shocking gym accident changed everything and she new she needed to make a significant change to her lifestyle.
Speaking to FEMAIL, the 46-year-old Gold Coast entrepreneur recalled the agonising moment she snapped the anterior cruciate ligament in her knee while doing star jumps at her regular gym class.
Stretched ‘tight like a rubber band’, the ligament exploded under the pressure of her 118kg frame as her feet landed on the ground mid way through the set.
‘My leg crumpled and my body went crashing down, hitting the floor with a giant crash,’ she said.
‘I blacked out before impact but woke up to searing pain and a knee which could no longer support my weight.’
Lisa Jones considered herself to be fit and healthy, but her reflection told a different story
Now she rocks the body she’s always hoped for at 46 years old
When she went to see the surgeon, her outlook only became darker.
‘The doctor took one look at me and I felt like he put me in the old, unfit, overweight people pile,’ Lisa explained.
‘It was like because I was overweight I wouldn’t need the knee anyway so I was told to “put it off until I was older”.’
She insisted to go ahead with surgery, which was successful, but that experience of being regarded as physically past it stuck with her.
Lisa mulled upon it as she ‘bum shuffled’ around her home for weeks post-surgery, pulling her way up and down the stairs using her arms, while also trying to keep up with her two children.
It was then the reality of her heavy load became all too apparent to her.
‘I realised how much pressure I had been putting on my body,’ she said.
Lisa, who was 43 at the time of the accident, had already tried every ‘fad’ diet and exercise regime that had come on her radar since she was in her early 20s.
‘I felt like the doctor took one look at me and I felt like he put me in the old, unfit, overweight people pile,’ Lisa explained
Lisa had tried to shift her excess body weight in the past – trying every ‘fad’ diet and exercise regime that had come on her radar since she was in her early 20s
‘I started putting weight on when I was in my teens and I would lose some then it would pile back on plus more,’ she said.
So Lisa knew there was no quick fix, that she needed more permanent, medically assisted options to get the weight off once and for all.
After looking at every option she landed on gastric sleeve surgery.
‘I had always thought it was for super large people – like people over 140kg. But the more I looked into it the more I realised people who weight as little as 80kg were doing it,’ she said.
Lisa had to up her health insurance and ‘wait a whole, excruciating year’ before she could have the surgery, but says it’s the best thing she has ever done.
She lost 51kg and shrank from a size 18 to a size eight.
‘When I look in the mirror I see a confident, super hot woman looking back at me,’ she said.
‘The hardest part was deciding to do it,’ she said. ‘Once I did the weight just fell off.’
Lisa had always felt fit and healthy and even went through phases of running 50km a week, doing aerobics workouts and weights classes.
‘I would dedicate 90 minutes to exercise a day then I would get injured and slow down and the weight would come back on,’ she said.
That never happened following gastric surgery.
‘People said I wouldn’t be able to drink anything with bubbles or eat carbs but I have found that’s all rubbish,’ she said.
Lisa went through two rounds of plastic surgery to remove her excess skin
‘I eat everything I did before, the serving size is just four or five times smaller.’
She does have to ‘watch her hydration’ because she can’t drink with a meal or soon after but now has that down pat three years post-op.
‘If I had known how good I would feel and how easy it was I would have done it years ago,’ she said.
The mum has also recently gone through two ‘hardcore’ plastic surgery operations to get rid of the excess skin which was left as a result of her incredible weight loss.
Not only has her confidence risen, her home life is better than ever too.
‘My teenage daughter tells me I am beautiful every single day,’ she said.
‘I will never forget the day I took her to the park about two years after my operation. I was able to chase her around and she squealed in excitement.’
The mum, who left an unhappy marriage before her accident, is also getting ‘more attention than ever’ from potential suitors.
‘I am so in love with my body, I have a flat tummy and just wear crop tops all the time. I have so much self-confidence and feel like I look younger,’ she said.
‘I feel like taking the stress of that 50kg off my body has made a huge difference. My knee is amazing, like new.
‘I used to have planter fasciitis and heel spurs all the time and now I never get sore feet.’
Every now and then Lisa gets a shock and ‘forgets she is thin’.
She says she is healthier and happier than she has ever been
‘I will sit on a chair and then freak out that I will break it, but then my brain catches up and I realise I have lost the weight and it is a permanent thing.’
Lisa found a stomach surgeon who did the operation without a gap – using only her private health cover.
The plastic surgeries set her back $70,000, but was an investment Lisa says she would ‘make again and again’.
‘That was vanity, purely about how I looked but I could justify it. I knew how I wanted my new amazing body to look and was happy to spend my savings,’ she said.
Lisa says she has friends taking Ozempic and other weight-loss drugs and is glad she found gastric surgery before they became widely available.
‘I probably would have tried it, I tried everything. I have friends on it but they are paying upwards of $400 every month,’ she said.
