Determination saw Lauren shed four stone in seven months

Becoming an influential voice on social media, glamorous Mullingar woman Lauren Egerton tells Eilís Ryan that she has battled both weight and hair loss issues and that you don't need to break the bank to look good

READ ALSO: Hair loss story echoed with many

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Not being able to face looking at photographs of herself with her only brother – on his wedding day – was a major turning point in the life of young Mullingar woman Lauren Egerton.

Four stone heavier than she is today, and wearing a size 18-20 dress, Lauren was devastated that she hadn’t succeeded in her aim of slimming down for the wedding.

“I didn't want to see pictures. I just didn't want to. I said, 'I actually can't do this',” she says.

It was then that she decided she was going to try again and try harder to lose the weight – and incredibly, within seven months she shed four stone, and started wearing size 8-10.

But it hasn’t been all plain sailing, as Lauren’s growing fanbase across TikTok and Instagram have been seeing: Lauren has been incredibly forthright about how her dramatic weight reduction brought a devastating side-effect: severe hair loss.

Her story would come as a surprise to anyone stumbling across Lauren's account on social media as she is a glamorous, stylish, fun and extremely likeable personality: it is only when coming to know Lauren through the various clips she has posted that it becomes clear she is not just another influencer who has had it easy doing GRWM (Get Ready With Me) and shopping haul videos.

Her videos are relatable; when she puts together an outfit, it’s often with separates from Dunnes and Penneys – she recently put a stunning Ladies Day outfit for a race meeting using clothes from Penneys. When she talks food or makes up one of her diet recipes, she’s using products and ranges we all use.

“I want to be [for her followers] like the best friend that I needed when I actually started this whole thing. And that was from the get-go. That's all I wanted to do and that's all I want to do on TikTok,” says Lauren.

“I don't mind about followers or likes or any of that kind of stuff. It doesn't mean a whole lot.”

Lauren does actually have quite a glamorous career. She is a make-up artist and hair stylist who specialises in catering for brides. Her job regularly takes her to weddings abroad, largely around Europe. She loves the work, enjoys being with brides at such a happy time of their lives, enjoys making sure they look their best for the occasion and for the photographs, and laughs that sometimes the job involves more than merely a case of seeing they look their best.

“If there's anything that goes wrong, even if there's a button missing off the dress, if something needs sorting - like I remember there's been times where, you know, florists haven't shown up and I've gone out and I've actually collected flowers out of people's gardens – with permission; or things like dresses splitting, things that have been lost, wedding cars not showing up. I've dropped brides to the front door of the church.”

Agency

Out of the blue she got signed by an agency, something that is really difficult to achieve and she hadn't been looking to go that direction. That meant working with brands, something many people dream of.

However Lauren wasn't entirely happy with what she was doing, explaining that when she started out she found herself putting out videos portraying a version of perfection, while at the same time, she was conscious that whenever she herself saw similar videos, they would leave her feeling insecure:

“I would be looking at other people and feeling like ‘I don't have her skin; I don't have her body’. I used to feel really bad about myself so then I thought 'why am I doing that? Why am I putting out these pretty videos with everything looking immaculate?' And so I kind of pulled back an awful lot.”

Diet

All this time Lauren was grappling with her weight: “I've always been yo-yo dieting; I've always been up and down. I was on this diet, I was on that diet. I've gone through all the diets. I could write a book on them.

“As far back as I've known what a calorie was, and a weighing scale, I have been on a diet.”

The most she had ever succeeded in losing in the past was around a stone and a half.

“And I was sick of it all. I was sick of having to start over.

“I was sick of having to buy clothes and then they wouldn't fit me. And then you try and get back into them and you can't. And then you buy more big clothes.

“And then do you know what it was? It was the mental strain that I had in my life because every day I woke up and I thought about my weight. Every single day.

“And every single day, all I thought about was food. What am I putting into my mouth? Is it good? Is it bad? What is it?”

When Lauren made the decision to really tackle the weight issue a goal she set herself was that by her 30th birthday, she would fit into the dress she originally bought for her now sister-in-law's hen party.

“I bought a black dress for the hen, and I had a whole year of me saying, ‘I'm going to get my weight down for the hen. I've got to get the weight down for the hen.’ But I didn't. The dress didn't fit me: I'd say it was two sizes too small.

“And then I said, ‘I'm going to do it for the wedding’, which was in three or four months. But by that point, I had gained so much more weight that I had worn, I think, a size 18 to 20. And that was my biggest weight.”

For her 30th birthday not alone was she able to wear the hen party dress, but she in fact had to have it taken in.

Planning

When she decided she was going to diet this time, Lauren didn't do as she normally did and pick a low carb or a high fibre diet or any of the named diets.

“Instead of going to somebody else and saying, ‘you tell me what to do; you tell me what to eat or you tell me X, Y and Z’. I decided, I'd actually never sat down and asked myself what was going to work. Like, what is going to work for me on a daily basis? What's going to make me stick to healthy eating and to my weight loss? And I just wrote out exactly what I wanted to do, what I wanted to eat, what things that I enjoyed.

“And I just came up with a plan then. And I thought to myself: 'I'm going to still eat the foods that I love. But I need to learn how to make them in a better way'.”

She looked online for lower calorie versions of meals she best enjoyed and realising she couldn't succeed if she deprived herself completely of treats, she chose snacks, including chocolate bars, that were low calorie - although she stresses that she never actually counted calories while dieting.

“So I did that for a couple of weeks and I had lost the weight. I had lost a good amount of weight at that point. I'd say just under a stone, I think.

“But I felt like I needed accountability – I needed something, some sort of support because I didn't want to fall off the bandwagon. I was going so well and I didn't want to just all of a sudden fly off the rails. Because that's what I'm used to.”

Lauren realised that the regimen she had set for herself was similar to that the eating programme that Slimming World subscribers follow and so she signed up with Slimming World.

Lauren even started creating some of her own recipes, and she has shared some of these on TikTok, the recipe for her carbonara having been particularly requested, and a big hit with her followers.

“Losing weight doesn’t need to be either boring or difficult and that is what I love to teach people. It can be very simple if you learn how to do the basics yourself. I try to make it very simple and easy for people to understand.”