Angelina says her weight was starting to cause issues for her son – as he was being bullied at school
A woman who once weighed more than 26 stone has lost half her body weight after having gastric sleeve surgery and taking Mounjaro and has said she now feels the impact of “thin privilege” as people are kinder to her. Angelina Bonsor, a 39-year-old barber and hairdresser, reached her heaviest weight of 26 stone 4lb (167kg) during the Covid-19 lockdown, when her diet consisted mainly of processed foods and takeaways.
Standing at 5ft 9ins, Angelina said she felt she “could eat what she wanted” at the time, as she was already on the waiting list for gastric sleeve surgery, which she believed would “fix” her weight. But after the sudden death of her brother in 2023 and her son being bullied because of her weight, she decided to make a change and began cutting back on processed foods.
She underwent gastric sleeve surgery in May 2024 – a procedure which, according to the NHS, involves removing around 80% of the stomach to create a smaller, sleeve-shaped pouch – and by July 2025, she had reduced her weight to 15 stone 2lb (96kg). When her progress plateaued, she began taking Mounjaro and she now weighs 13 stone 7lb (86kg), wearing a size 14 and feeling more confident than ever.
Angelina, who lives in Coventry with her husband, Nigel, a 44-year-old health and safety adviser, and two children – Evan, 10, and Aidan, 19 – told PA Real Life: “I think it’s made me realise there’s a thin privilege – I feel like people are nicer to me now, and aren’t looking at me up and down. Before, I felt like people were judging me or wouldn’t sit next to me.
“If I’m walking or running out on the streets, people don’t even look, whereas before, I think if I was still 26 stone running, people would have looked and judged, and I think that’s awful. I think people respect me now and are kinder.”
Angelina has been “overweight” for most of her life and over the years, she tried many diets, such as Slimming World, but “nothing seemed to stick”. By around 2019, she weighed 23 stone (146kg), but during the Covid-19 lockdown she reached her heaviest weight of 26 stone 4lb (167kg), wearing clothes in size 28 to 30, with an obese BMI of 54.3.
Angelina was already on the waiting list for gastric sleeve surgery, and believed that the procedure “would fix” her weight, so she thought she could “eat what she wanted” in the meantime. During this period, her typical meals included four slices of toast for breakfast, a chocolate mid-morning snack, sausage, chips and beans for lunch, and a takeaway for dinner, followed by biscuits and crisps in the evening.
When lockdown ended, she knew she had gained weight but “did not realise how much” until her old work clothes no longer fitted her. She said her self-esteem dropped to an “all-time low”, and she began avoiding leaving the house and socialising.
“If somebody suggested having a coffee in town, I wouldn’t want to, because I wouldn’t want to sit on the bus seats, because I would take up a seat-and-a-half,” she said. “When we used to go to McDonald’s as a family, I felt like people were looking at me, judging me.
“It became like a mental torture, I was stopping myself from doing things.”
Around the same time, her weight even began to affect her youngest son. She said: “My son came home from school one day, and he was really upset that somebody had called me fat, and it was just horrible to see him being bullied for my choices and him being upset because of what I’ve done.
“And I just thought, ‘That’s not fair, that’s not how it should be for him, he should be able to enjoy school and be happy’. We also lost my brother on Boxing Day two years ago – he had arterial fibrillation and literally dropped dead, his heart stopped.
“It made me realise that I need to do everything I can to prevent myself from dying.”
Determined to make a change, she began eating less processed food and later found out she was scheduled for gastric sleeve surgery in May 2024. By then, she had reduced her weight to 22 stone 11lb (144kg), and before the operation, she followed a pre-operative liver-reducing diet, which involved four SlimFast shakes a day, a cup of Bovril and water for one month.
Under the guidance of doctors, her post-surgery meals typically consisted of porridge, a quarter of a sandwich, three Ritz crackers with some tuna, and a quarter of a jacket potato with cheese. Over time, Angelina lost around two pounds a week, but by the end of 2024 her progress began to slow.
In January 2025, she hired a personal trainer, started home workouts three times a week and walked more than 10,000 steps a day. She also began using MyFitnessPal, the number one global nutrition and food-tracking app which allows members to track their food, record exercise activity, and log their weight.
It also has one of the largest food databases in the world comprising more than 20 million foods, access to more than 2,000 recipes, more than 40 workout routines, and more than 40 connected fitness partners. She said: “It’s such a good, handy app to have – you scan the barcodes of your food and it does it all for you, and makes it so much easier, I use it religiously.”
Since working out and tracking her progress, she feels “physically strong”, regularly using a 16kg dumbbell for exercises and noticing definition in her shoulders and arms. But by July, her weight loss had plateaued at 15 stone 2lb (96kg), so she decided to start taking Mounjaro – a weight-loss injection medication which makes you feel fuller for longer and therefore less hungry – to boost her results.
She found that it helped suppress her “food noise”, and she now weighs 13 stone 7lb (86kg), wearing a size 14, with an overweight BMI of 27.9. On an average day, she now eats a protein yoghurt for breakfast, a sandwich thin with chicken for lunch, and meatballs and pasta for dinner, while snacking on fruit throughout the day.
“My son has invited me to his school to help out in a class, whereas before he never would have asked, and he’s no longer embarrassed by me,” Angelina said. “I feel so much more confident and feel like I’m making the most of things now – I’ll walk further to see a sunset or walk up a hill for the nice view, and I wouldn’t have done that before.”
To others wanting to lose weight, she said: “Just try to take small steps at a time, but just try it, you won’t regret it.”
For more information about MyFitnessPal, visit: www.myfitnesspal.com.