INSPIRING TRANSFORMATION
VICTORIA WILLIAMSON, 35, GOLD COAST • WAS 82kg NOW 62kg
Living in Western Australia, away from friends and family, and with a newborn and 2-year-old to care for, Victoria Williamson turned to food to cope with stress and loneliness.
“I was never an emotional eater but I started comfort eating to get me through the days,” she said. “It was overwhelming as I was breastfeeding and looking after a toddler and my husband worked six days a week. It was hard.”
At her heaviest, Williamson said she was bigger than when she was pregnant with her second child, Lucy, and found herself too ashamed to go to the park with her girls because of her weight.
When the family moved back to Queensland’s Gold Coast in December 2015, Williamson, now a single mother to Elle, 6, and Lucy, 4, was tired of being lethargic and uncomfortable and decided to make some positive changes.
“I knew the girls needed a healthy mum, and I needed to have the energy to do everything I needed to do to take care of them,” she says.
With no daycare for the girls and expensive gym memberships not an option, Williamson started putting Elle and Lucy in the pram and walking along the esplanade at Burleigh Heads six days a week.
“For the whole of 2016, I was just walking,” she said. “Once I started losing weight, I went faster and faster and made my workouts harder and harder. The girls started getting bigger so there was more weight to push.” As well as her daily walks, Williamson cleaned up her diet and introduced an Isagenix shake as a meal replacement once a day.
Now a trim size 8 to 10, Williamson has introduced boxing and boot camp sessions, which she does through the Gold Coast City Council for $4 and $5 a class, into her routine and has met a bunch of like-minded mums. “I feel so good,” she said. “I have the energy to do things with the girls all day, non-stop whereas once I would crash and burn.”
“I knew the girls needed a healthy mum”