Just 25 years old, Lauren Council had already given up hope ofever losing weight. After years of binge eating, and the pain of losing her mom to breast cancer when she was in high school, the Ripon, California native found herself weighing 270 lbs.
“I had accepted that this was going to be my life because nothing seemed to motivate me,” Council, 26, tells PEOPLE for the2018 “How We Lost 100 Lbs.” issue. “I was so unhappy, and I would think all the time that I was probably going to hit 300 lbs. within a couple years.”
But everything changed one night in April 2017, when horrible stomach pain sent her to urgent care.
“I had this pain I’d never experienced before and was up sick all night and didn’t know what was going on,” she says. “I had experienced digestive issues on and off for years, but nothing to this extreme.”
A month later, Council was diagnosed with IBS, or irritable bowel syndrome, and decided — partly out of necessity — to go gluten- and dairy-free, and cut out junk food. Finally readyto make a change,she ditched the soda and candy once and for all.
“I decided that was it. I was not gonna go back to my old ways,” she says. “I couldn’t live life like that, just being sick all the time. That was the wake up call I needed to finally do something about my diet and my lifestyle.”
For more on Council and four more women who lost 100 lbs., pick up a copy of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.
RELATED VIDEO: How We Lost 100+ Pounds! Here Are The Habits These Three Women Used to Revamp Their Lives
“I know she would be so proud of me,” Council says of her mom. “She wanted me to be the happiest I could ever be. To see her sick most of our lives with breast cancer and fighting that battle for almost 10 years — I just don’t want to have to go through what she had to go through.”
Ari Michelson
She’s now working on finding a balance as she transitions to maintaining her weight loss. But Council is “incredibly excited” about her accomplishment.
“It’s changed my life dramatically,” she says. “I’m so incredibly excited and happy and proud of myself to be at where I’m at today.”
“From day one, I decided to post on social media because it helped me keep myself accountable, but early on, I found that it was making a difference in other people’s lives,” she says. “And even if it’s just that one person that I can help, I mean, that right there is just so incredibly rewarding.”
source: people.com
