The teenage girl who transformed her body after adopting a puppy has made headlines around the world for her astonishing weight loss.
18-year-old Jenna Winchester from New York previously weighed 166kgs, after years of ‘comfort eating’ to cope with bullying.
“At the age of 16, I weighed nearly 400 pounds. I spent my childhood being the fat girl, wishing and wanting to be a different person; smaller, happier, healthier, prettier, etc.”
“Year after year I would tell myself next year you’ll lose the weight, but I could never manage to,” Jenna wrote
“I lived a hectic childhood in a “broken home”, my parents divorced, and in a never-ending whirlwind with a narcissistic father who belittled and made fun of me. “
“I became severely depressed, I would sleep all day, never leave the house and just eat all day and night to make myself feel better.”
In 2015 after struggling to fit a car seatbelt around herself, Jenna made a change and ditched junk food from her diet.
“My size and weight got to a point to where I could barely fit the seatbelt in the car around me. I started to feel trapped like a caged animal, so when my 17th birthday rolled around, I again told myself I was going to lose the weight and I did.”
The teenager then decided to adopt a German Shepherd puppy called Nadia, and through taking her on daily walks Jen began to exercise – and now goes to the gym every day.
“With my best friend (my dog Nadia) by my side I started to walk, and then run.”
” I started to change my diet and the weight started to come off, 202 pounds. As I started to lose the weight I started to feel free, I could breathe, I could run, I could smile. I started to feel human because as I shed the weight, I shed the pain of the past and learned how to live.”
Jenna has now slimmed down to 79 kg and believes that setting goals was the key to staying on track.
Since losing an impressive 88 kg however, Jenna has been left with excess skin all over her body.
“I have days where I look in the mirror at all of my excess skin and still feel like I’m on the verge of weighing 400 pounds.”
“I’ve gotten good at hiding it with compression leggings and waist wraps to keep the skin from tugging and pulling as I move. I use baby powder to stop the skin from becoming raw and sore. The closer I get to my goal weight, the looser the skin gets and the more uncomfortable it becomes.”
“My only option is to have it surgically removed which costs tens of thousands of dollars, being 18 and a full-time college student, perusing a degree in Exercise Science, to help people like me, it’s impossible to afford it.”
She is now fundraising to remove the extra skin from her stomach and hopes once it’s gone she will no longer be ‘haunted’ by how big she used to be.
