‘I fat-shamed myself into a 50 kilogram weight loss’

A 122 KILOGRAM woman has managed to lose 50 kilos with an unusual form of self-motivation. It was painful at first, but now she feels fantastic.

‘I fat-shamed myself into weight loss’

A WOMAN in Iceland credits her 50 kilogram weight loss to posting embarrassing selfies of herself on Facebook — which motivated her to shed the weight.

“I posted the first one almost as a joke,” Eva Rut Gunnlaugsdottir told Central European News. “I felt really bad about myself and looked bad and I felt if I could start to see the change it might help me to carry on. But in fact I was also so embarrassed about the images that it was something that made me determined to carry on.”

Eva during her weight loss regime.

Eva Rut Gunnlaugsdottir, before.

The 35-year-old Reykjavik resident, who is a sucker for chocolate, says she reached rock bottom last year when her weight had ballooned to 122 kilograms.

“For me, food was a drug,” Gunnlaugsdottir explained. “I never ate just one little chocolate piece, it was always something more.

“I’ve always had trouble controlling my diet and have been immensely overweight since I was 18 years old,” she added. “After I had my children almost seven years ago, I completely lost control of everything and put on quite a lot of weight.”

Midway through: Eva and brother.

When she decided to make a change by posting honest and true-to-life pictures of herself — something rarely seen on Facebook — Gunnlaugsdottir quickly noticed the effect it had on her.

“The first two or three days of the diet were a bit difficult, but since then I’ve been so stable, floating around on a pink cloud,” she said. “I was more energetic and could easily get up in the morning. I felt better as all kinds of physical pain disappeared.”

Loyal friends and family were ultimately the ones who brought up the idea of staring at the before-and-after differences in her selfies. This is what kept Gunnlaugsdottir on her diet, she said.

Looking trim: Eva now.

By the end of the year, she had managed to lose 50 kilograms — and gained back her confidence.

“I felt fantastic,” she said. “In fact I felt fantastic after the first few days, and that feeling just continued.”

Now that she’s taken the first big steps toward getting to a healthy weight, Gunnlaugsdottir is determined to keep up the hard work — and thanks to her new weight loss regimen, she has learned to accept the person staring back at her in pictures.

“I still find it painful to look at the first few selfies from last year,” she admitted. “But I always feel better looking at the end of the year.”