Jen Ault was a married, happy mother of one. However, she weighed 312 pounds at her heaviest.
She’d struggled with weight her whole life. By the time she was 20, she weighed over 250 pounds.
At the age of 24, she became a single mother. She was now a full-time caretaker for her son, Ben, who has autism. She coped through food, and eventually tipped the scale at 312 pounds.
At the time, her weight wasn’t getting in the way of her happiness. She met Andy, who she thought was the man of her dreams, and they got married in 2011.
“He didn’t seem to care about my weight and he said he loved me the way I was,” she said.
Like any marriage, the first few months were bliss. Then, things took a turn.
“It all started to change when I noticed him making hurtful remarks about my body,” she said. “Night after night, he would tell me to sleep on the sofa so that he had more room in bed.”
Her confidence plummeted, but she was determined to do something about it. She joined Slimming World in 2014 and lost 63 pounds. But her husband was still disparaging of her weight.
“I remember him saying, ‘You can’t even notice any weight loss—have you lost it from your ankles?’”
She tried talking to him about it, but he persisted in his abuse. “When I told him ow he made me feel, he said, ‘It’s all in your head, you fat cow.’”
Jen had enough. She divorced him, and continued her weight loss journey on her own. Now, she’s down to 168 pounds.
She met her current partner, Stuart, when he came to speak at her Slimming World meeting. Stuart lost over 300 pounds in less than two years, and knew exactly what she was going through.
“His weight loss completely changed his life. He struggled to walk before, but now he’s training for next year’s London marathon. He has supported me through such a hard time in my life,” she says. Jen also says Stuart gets along well with her son.
“I will never, ever go back to the person that I was,” says Jen. “I still get a shock when I look in the mirror—I can’t believe it’s me.”
