"I Shed an Incredible 11 Stone, But My Weight Loss Added 20 Years—How a New Treatment Restored My Youthful Glow!"

GLANCING at the flurry of selfies she’d just quickly taken on her phone while waiting for a client, Charmaine Masoeu gasped at the unrecognisable face staring back at her.

Pleased with her make-up that day and feeling confident, the glam IT consultant had understandably seized a quick photo opportunity in between meetings – but despite losing a whopping 11st, after seeing the picture, she felt worse than ever.

The 52-year-old, pictured here before her dramatic weight loss, struggled with her weight but was constantly told she looked younger than her yearsCredit: Supplied Charmaine always struggled with her weight, and was self-conscious of her stomach in particular before losing 11st with a mix of weight loss jabs and surgeryCredit: Supplied When Charmaine saw this selfie of herself after losing 11st she was aghast – after all that hard work to regain her confidence, she was left feeling worse than everCredit: Supplied

Having struggled with her her whole life, she’d initially been ecstatic to lose 11st to go from a size 22 to a size 8 with a mix of gastric surgery and , and she’d expected to finally feel more confident than ever – instead, as a result of such rapid weight loss, she says she looked “old and hagged.”

Mum-of-two Charmaine, now 52, who lives in , says: “When I looked at that photo, taken last year, I just thought ‘oh my god’.

“I loved my makeup, but my whole face was sagging. My skin was dull, and my chin and cheekbones looked deflated.

“I’d always had good genes, and before, people had always complimented me on how young I looked and would say I looked like I was in my thirties, but now, suddenly, I’d aged at least 20 years. I didn’t want to look in my fifties!

“I was devastated and in that moment could have cried.

“To have lost all that weight, which I’d struggled with my whole life, and to finally be happy with my figure, but then to suddenly look 20 years older facially was awful.”

Thankfully, Charmaine is finally happy with her appearance, thanks to a minor called Sculptra, which has plumped up the areas in her face impacted by her weight loss. But she hasn’t always felt so confident.

Growing up, Charmaine always struggled with her weight. She says: “I was always a chubby child.

“As a teenager, I was about a size 16 and remember going swimming with my cousins, and I noticed how flat their stomachs were, whereas mine was a bulge. My stomach is what’s always bothered me.

“I just always liked my food, and my relationship with my parents, who were divorced, revolved a lot around meals. My favourite thing was going for a burger with my dad.

“My parents would try to make me happy with food, and I loved snacking – I always felt hungry and loved sweets and treats.

“I have older sisters, and we’d always be dieting, exercising or trying something new to lose weight, and my weight would fluctuate, but I’d only ever manage to lose around 10kg at a time before putting it back on, so I was always overweight.”

In 2016, when Charmaine was 42, she weighed her heaviest- 18st 2lb (116kg), a size 22.

She says: “I felt disgusting. I was trying to lose weight, and I’d joined the gym and got a personal trainer, but they insisted on weighing me each week and every week I’d lose weight, then put it back on. It was soul-destroying. It was a vicious cycle I couldn’t break. ”

Now the mum-of-two is delighted by both her weight loss and fuller face, with a ‘tweakment’ defining her facial featuresCredit: Supplied Charmaine now feels more confident in her fifties than ever beforeCredit: Supplied

Then, in March 2020, the country went into lockdown.

Charmaine says: “I told everyone – ‘I am not coming out of lockdown fatter than when I went in’ so I started researching, and booked gastric sleeve surgery where they removed 70 per cent of my stomach.

“It was a simple keyhole operation, and I was up and walking about on the same day. I was so excited – I was like ‘finally! Something that’s going to solve all my problems.

“For a while it worked – I was on a liquid-only diet for the first couple of months, and the weight quickly dropped off.

“I lost 6st, going down to 12st 5lb (80kg), a size sixteen. I was happier, but I’d always had an idea of what I wanted to look like, and that was a slim waist and curvy figure.

“However, while I’d lost weight, I still wasn’t confident, and was left with an overhanging pocket of fat on my belly.

“I’d always buy peplum tops because they covered my stomach.”

Charmaine became self-conscious of her stomach in particular, but even after she lost the weight she was left with excess skin and overhang in that area so she had a tummy tuckCredit: Supplied

Fat jabs & plastic surgery solution

Still not content, Charmaine booked a tummy tuck in 2022.

She says: “It was only after that surgery that I started to regain my confidence. That was the game-changer for me. I gradually went down to a size twelve, around 11st (72kg).”

However, Charmaine’s weight then started fluctuating, and by the time she was 50, her size 12 clothes were getting tight.

She says: “My problem has always been sugary treats like sweets, and despite the gastric sleeve, I was still able to start putting on weight.”

It’s been such a long journey, I’m so happy to finally feel so much more confident, and younger, in my fifties than ever before.”

Charmaine

Worried about putting the weight back on, in July 2024, Charmiane then started Mounjaro weight loss jabs, hearing about them through a friend of a friend who lived in Dubai.

She says: “I found a pharmacy that sold it, and it was super cheap. Not like it is now, which helped me drop to the size I am now by September last year – a size 8, and 7st 4lb (47kg).

“I’d been happy as a size 12, so I hadn’t planned to lose so much and initially thought I was too skinny, but because I’m 5ft, my BMI is healthy.

“Some family and friends think I’m too skinny, but for the first time ever, I feel this is what I’m supposed to weigh, and now I really like it.”

‘I looked haggard’

While Charmaine is happy with her figure, she admits her diet isn’t healthy due to the impact the jabs and sleeve surgery have had on her appetite.

She admits: “I always suffered from ‘food noise’, but now I don’t really think about food at all.

“I do try to eat fish, some veg, but get most of my energy from sugar and forget to eat, so I know it’s not the healthiest diet.

“The thing that has shocked me the most, though, is how losing so much weight suddenly aged my face. I looked haggard.

“Looking at those selfies made me feel awful, and I knew I needed to do something about it.

I didn’t want to put on weight, so I contacted Dr Ana.”

Last year, Charmaine had three sessions of Sculptra – an injectable used to trigger natural collagen production to restore skin elasticity and volume, and fillers, which she’ll have to repeat annually to maintain her current look.

She says: “The results were incredible, and now I look better than I did before when I was younger.

“I got the volume back in my chin, and regained the volume I’d lost around my cheekbones and my cheeks.

“It’s been such a long journey, I’m so happy to finally feel so much more confident, and younger, in my fifties than ever before.”

She was devastated to realise her weight loss had left her face saggy and ‘haggard’Credit: Supplied It’s been a long journey, but the IT consultant finally feels happy, after years of battling low confidenceCredit: Supplied She finally has a defined face, and the svelte body she always dreamed of – pictured after receiving facial filler treatmentCredit: Supplied

Turning back time

Costing around £400- £800 a time and requiring a course of two or three sessions, it’s not a new or cheap treatment, but it has soared in popularity over the last couple of years – perhaps as more people experience rapid weight loss using jabs, including Ozempic or Mounjaro.

Dr Ana Mansouri, who carried out Charmaine’s ‘tweakment’, is seeing a rapid increase in requests for Sculptra.

She says: “We’ve really noticed a significant increase [in demand] over the last couple of years.

“It’s quite a common denominator that they feel really amazing about the fact that they’ve lost the weight, and they feel healthier and better for it, but they just were not expecting, and they were not prepared for this really huge setback in their confidence because of how quickly and significantly their face had aged.

“It’s essentially a non-surgical treatment where we combine different types of injectables to target the effects of rapid or significant weight loss, which is usually more visible or more significant in the face.

“This is usually targeted towards the middle of the face, or the mid-face as we call it, which includes the cheeks. Often, the apples of the cheek suffer quite significantly because that’s where we have naturally the fullness that can melt away with weight loss.

“You’ve got two processes that can happen – so you lose the structure of the face when you lose weight… the structural scaffolding to hold things up and tight.

“So imagine it’s like the legs of the table, the structural and underlying support, and when we lose the fat, it all crumbles and almost deflates like a balloon, and the overlying skin is also losing collagen.

“You lose the elasticity, and it goes saggy, and together you may have aged ten to fifteen years during a short period of time,

“It focuses more on skin quality… You’re not just filling or camouflaging or just temporarily hiding a problem, but actually going down to the root cause of the issue, which is the loss of elasticity and the loss of collagen, and you’re stimulating that.

“So the way I see it is that you’re actually ageing backwards.

“You’re taking damaged skin, and you are truly regenerating it, so you’re ageing the patient backwards back to what they might have been before the weight loss journey.”

Charmaine has spent thousands over the years to gain her ideal lookCredit: Supplied