New look for Karon!

Sep 25 2008 by Hilarie Stelfox, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

‘I am fed up with people asking me if I am ill and telling me not to lose any more weight as I look old and haggard’

Karon Whitehead, 52, is the winner of our extreme make-over competition and has begun a six-week course of facial treatments designed to make her look ten years younger. We’ll be giving Karon the full top-to-toe treatment – with a new hairstyle, make-up and clothes – at the beginning of November. HILARIE STELFOX reports

AFTER a lifetime carrying around more weight than she wanted and wearing outsize clothes, Karon Whitehead finally has a figure to flaunt.

But losing more than 2½ stones in the last year has left 52-year-old with a new problem.

“I have always had a chubby younger looking face but having lost a significant amount of weight I now have an older looking, dull face – with too much skin,’’ said Karon.

When the psychiatric nurse from Dalton saw our ten years younger make-over competition, offering a course of skin peeling treatments, followed by a new hairstyle, make-up and an outfit from Principles, she decided that she could do with our help.

“Although I am pleased with my weight loss I am fed up with people asking me if I am ill and telling me not to lose any more weight as I look old and haggard. As I don’t wear make-up I don’t know how to make the best of a bad job,” she wrote.

Karon, who is a mother of three and grandmother of three, is a regular attender at the Slimming World class held by Lynda Thwaites in Almondbury and goes running every Wednesday with a Sport for Life group. “I feel as if I’m doing some of the right things. I don’t smoke or drink. Now I need to get the outside looking good,” she added.

The last 18 months have been difficult for Karon and her family. After being overweight for best part of 30 years, Karon made up her mind to change her eating and lifestyle habits. As a sufferer of diabetes and high blood pressure/cholesterol, she knew that she had to do something to safeguard her health for the future.

Tragically, Karon lost her mum to lung cancer back in May 2007, after helping to nurse her through a lengthy illness. “I actually lost weight without realising it, due to the stress, and then thought afterwards that I could lose some more. Something just clicked,” she explained.

Losing weight and taking regular exercise have helped to increase Karon’s energy levels. I just used to come home from work and fall asleep. Now I can run around with my grandchildren.

“I also go walking with my husband Stephen and he sometimes comes running with me,” she said.

Beauty therapist Lisa Panton, who works at a treatment room in Rubens salon, Westgate, is giving Karon a course of treatments by Spanish facial resurfacing company Mesoestetic.