45-year-old Angela Doonan has been to hell and back. Not only has the mother of one battled (and won) against cancer twice, but the aggressive treatment used to crush the disease once and for all left her with a slew of health problems including high blood pressure and stage three renal failure. Coupled with the death of her daughter, by 2010 Angela’s weight had ballooned to 234 pounds and she “no longer wanted to live.”
Her life took a 180 however, after her husband forced her to go on a walk around their neighborhood. The first walk was only 15 minutes, but as time progressed they became longer and longer, eventually building up into daily hikes. “Because I was a grieving mother no one pointed out I was gaining weight,” she explains to Daily Mail,”I hid in my room and cried. I was a wreck. My health declined. I could barely breathe, I had a fatty liver. I developed pre-diabetes. I was in a fog and just going through the motions.”
‘Jim took the bull by the horns. He pushed and pulled me out of the depression.
‘He told me we were going for a walk – which wasn’t easy for me. I couldn’t breathe and I was telling him to stop.
‘I cried and cried and it was only a 15 minute walk.
‘There was a couple of choice words he heard from me then.
‘But we say that in our family we don’t love each other to death we love another to live.
‘He has to use tough love to get me to walk every day.
‘But 15 minutes built to 30 minutes and then an hour. And by six months he could no longer keep up.’(via)
Over the next 18 months Angela continued walking, gradually working weight training into her schedule and cleaning up her diet. After dropping down to a healthy 128 pounds, she says her doctors were “blown away” when they saw how well her heart and kidneys were functioning. “They called me a poster child for the benefits of physical fitness,” she recalls. “We all know exercise helps but I was living proof. Our bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made.”
Angela now plans on entering her first bodybuilding competition in November, and if her photos are any indication, she’s a shoo-in for first place:
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[H/T Daily Mail]