14 DAY TRIAL // Controversial reality star Mama June, real name June Thompson, the matriarch on TLC’s now defunct Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, is done with being overweight. Now on a diet and working out with a personal trainer, the 35-year-old is also planning weight loss surgery.
She’s already seen specialists and has spoken about the risks involved, and she’s booked for the intervention later this summer, TMZ has learned.
Mama June does some heavy lifting, but not all
According to the celebrity publication, Mama June has been training hard with a personal trainer for some time now. She’s also been on a diet, and the combination of both has helped her shed about 45 pounds (20.4 kg) so far.
The problem is that she wants to lose another 50 pounds (22.6 kg) and she can’t because she’s reached a plateau. This is where Lap-Band would come in handy.
“June made the decision to go under the knife because she's plateaued with her trainer and her relatively healthy diet,” TMZ says. “She'll have the surgery this summer, which means she'll just miss bikini season.”
The same report notes that Mama June is now at 276 pounds (125.2 kg).
Should she go through with the surgery, expect her to get a makeover as well and to talk about it in detail with every media outlet that will ask her. After all, now that her family’s reality show has been canceled and she disgraced herself by dating a convicted pedophile, this is her only certain source of income.
A story months in the making
If you kept an eye on celebrity gossip and showbiz news, you probably saw this coming many months ago. At first, Mama June and her girls, including Honey Boo Boo, moved to Los Angeles in the hope of getting another job in television as it became clear that TLC would not bring their show back.
In February, Mama June and Honey Boo Boo made their first appearance on The Doctors where, you guessed it, they were both deemed obese and were put on a customized diet.
By April, both were struggling with it and couldn’t lose weight, though Mama June was also breaking a sweat at a local gym. Sometime later that month, she was papped out in the park with a trainer, doing outdoor exercises.
Mama June can no longer sell that image of her family as the perfect, quirky, rednecky and hilarious unit, as they were portrayed on the TLC show. She can’t sell an image of herself as a family woman at all, since she got busted sleeping with a man who had abused her own daughter when she was just 8 years old.
Obviously, she has no other skill to recommend her for reality television, so a weight loss journey is the only thing left for her to cash in on.