Yes, that really is a photo of June Shannon down below.
You’d be forgiven if you did a quadruple take upon looking at it, however, considering the formerly obese reality star has gone on a diet, gone under the knife and lost about 300 pounds as a result.
Yes: 300 pounds!
The mother of Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson rose to fame on the WE TV series Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, but she was mostly seen just sitting around the house and giving her kids a hard time on that program.
Fast forward a few years and Shannon signed on for Mama June: From Not to Hot.
About two months ago, she debuted her new, incredibly svelte figure, blowing away her ex-husband and every single viewer in the process.
“I’m in the 160s. I’m probably four or five pounds off from being there,” Shannon told Entertainment Tonight at the time of how she’s dropped down from a high over well over 400 pounds, adding:
“I’m happy that I went through with it and got what I wanted. I’ve been wanting it a long time.”
Last week, Shannon once again showed off her body while attending the premiere of Growing Up Hip Hop: Atlanta.
She’s on her way to that event in the photo above, posing alongside young Alana, who recently said of her foxy mama:
“She looks great. I’m really proud of her.”
Of course, it hasn’t been a breeze for Shannon.
She underwent skin removal surgery this spring and shared a number of horrifying photos from the experience.
Altogether, the gastric sleeve surgery, a breast augmentation and this skin removal procedure – to get rid of her “bat wings” and her “turkey neck” – cost about $ 100,000.
It’s unclear whether Shannon shelled out all this dough or if WE TV covered the costs, but Shannon is thrilled with the results either way.
“I’ve worked my ass off, working out, getting healthy, and now I feel like becoming the person on the outside that I always felt like on the inside,” she tells E! News.
Will Shannon star on another reality show at some point?
Nothing would surprise us at this point.
Appearing as a guest on The Wendy Williams Show a few weeks ago, however, June seemed more focus on her personal life than her professional life.
“I guess I became what you could call a ‘scale whore,’ because I was constantly kind of beating myself up,” she confessed, adding:
“I hate to say it, but Alana kind of started to be like that [too]. So I had to back off the scale, because she’s been kind of looking [at the scale, too.]”
At her heaviest, Shannon weighed 460 pounds.
She says she grew determined to change her life around make a splash at the wedding of her ex-husband, Mike “Sugar Bear” Thompson, to some woman named Jennifer.
She came right out and admitted this on the finale of From Not to Hot.
“My goal when I first started this weight loss journey was to make Sugar Bear kind of jealous,” Shannon told the camera, explaining:
“But it’s no longer about revenge. Doing all the surgeries really took a toll on me – not just physically, but emotionally.”
And yet here she is!
Take a look back at Shannon’s amazing weight loss journey below and go ahead and marvel. This is very impressive:
