Simone Pretscherer lost half her body weight in just 11 months

SIMONE Pretscherer lost half her body weight in just 11 months. But when she posted about it on Facebook, people didn’t believe her.

LESS than a year ago, Simone Pretscherer weighed 169kg. She’s now lost half her body weight and clocks 83kg on the scales.

It’s a dramatic transformation that the 24-year-old hair and makeup artist from Auckland achieved in just 11 months.

Ms Pretscherer says she was never unhappy with the way she looked, but wanted to improve her health.

“I was always a very confident, bubbly, outgoing person. It was never looks-based. It was always for my health,” she told news.com.au.

“I had no pressing health issues, but it was getting harder and harder to do day-to-day things. Even bringing in the garbage bin up our very steep driveway was difficult and that’s when it hit me that something needed to change.”

She started walking for 1 to 1.5 hours every day and stopped eating processed foods. On Facebook, she also says she had gastric sleeve surgery, a procedure which removes a large portion of the stomach.

“I wasn’t walking fast at all, but it was really hard for me at first. I would just walk the flat part of our local park. The hill bit was too hard. I just stuck to eating whole foods, nothing with a number on the back, and I tried to limit my portion sizes. But if I was hungry I would eat, it would just be something like a piece of fruit.

“I knew it could never be a ‘diet’ because that’s not something I could maintain for the rest of my life. If I felt like a piece of chocolate I would have one and I didn’t cut out alcohol. There’s no way I could live the rest of my life without carbs, sugar or alcohol.”

Photo: Simone Pretscherer

She lost 5kg in the first week and starting swimming, because high impact exercise like running would put strain on her joints. Now, she exercises for 1-2 hours a day.

“I do gym classes like body attack and boxing. I’m on two netball teams and I play basketball and water polo. I’m currently training for a half marathon. I do bootcamp once a week and I work with a personal trainer once a week. I’m willing to give everything a try.”

She’s completed three oceans swims across Auckland Harbour, a 20km walk and as soon as she was under the 100kg weight limit, she went skydiving for the first time.

Ms Pretscherer posts a progress shot on Facebook every four weeks. She says choosing to share her progress online was a difficult decision, but it helps her to stay motivated.

“It was the main reason why I stuck with it, because I knew by putting it out there for all my friends and family to see, everyone was watching and there was no turning back. It was so motivating, it’s ridiculous. There was no ‘Oh, this week I went to McDonald’s’. I didn’t want to let anyone down and I didn’t want to disappoint them.”

Last week, she posted a photo announcing she had dropped half her body weight. “I am officially half the person I was 11 months ago! From 169kg to 83.85kg, I can’t even begin to explain in words what this accomplishment feels like,” she wrote on Facebook.

Photo: Simone Pretscherer.

But hundreds of commenters questioned whether the photo was real.

“Two different girls sorry who you kidding?” wrote one user. Another said, “Sorry but that’s not the same person ... One, where has the extra skin gone which you would have and two your [sic] hiding your face with phone. Sorry people but it’s true”.

Others argued Simone’s weight loss was an impossible feat.

“Fake in every way, some people believe anything ... different hair colour, different eyebrow colour, different cheek bones and the list goes on. That’s why the phone in the second picture tries to hide the face ... apart from that, it cant be done in 11 months.”

Simone says it’s the first time she’d ever received criticism online.

“They said, ‘There’s no way that’s the same person. She doesn’t have any stretch marks or loose skin’. And obviously I do, I just didn’t think to show all of my loose skin in every post I put online.

“I’d actually shown my loose skin in a previous post a couple of months ago. And I’ve told everyone I’m going to be as honest and brutal about the side effects as possible. I’ve posted that photo before, so it’s not like I was only trying to show the glamorous side. I didn’t even think about it.”

So she posted this to silence her critics.

Photo: Simone Pretscherer

An earlier photo Simone posted of her stomach. Photo: Simone Pretscherer

“I don’t know why, but every single comment that called me out for being fake and a liar really bothered me far more than it should. I think it’s because it took hours of crying and debating whether to share my story online and for others to see, posting the first picture online along with my weight for the world to see what the hardest thing I have ever done,” she wrote on Facebook.

“Throughout my whole journey I have tried to be so honest about the whole experience and tell people it exactly as it’s happened so to be called a fake hurt a lot. And then when it came to posting about my lose skin well that was equally as tough. So here we go. I hope this helps all the ‘non believers’.”

And it seems it worked. “There were only two negative comments on that post,” she said.

Simone now has 45,000 Facebook followers and almost 6000 on Instagram. She shares snaps of her healthy meals and makeup shots.

Her followers wanted to help pay for Simone to have surgery a get her excess skin removed.

“My followers told me they wanted to donate and asked me to set up a fundraising page. I was really hesitant at first, but I did.” So far she’s received almost $2000 in donations.

“I’m so grateful for everything. I’m so proud because I never would have even thought of achieving this just 11 months ago,” she said.

Follow Simone on Facebook and Instagram.