Weight loss with a twist: How one woman lost 143lbs...by learning how to hula hoop

Losing weight is always a question of mind over matter but for one morbidly obese wife and mother, getting healthy was easy and fun.

Jen Moore, 31, weighed 288 lbs when she took up hula hooping as an effort to slim down. Now, thanks to the childhood sport, she is a trim 145lbs and has become an instructor for the company that helped her shed the weight.

Mrs Moore, who measures 5ft 5in, credits the low-impact activity with toning her core right from the beginning when she found she had to keep bending over to pick up the fallen hoop from the ground.

Let's twist again: Jen Moore, 31, lost 143lbs when she took up hula hooping and changed her diet



Writing about her experience for the Huffington Post she explained how within three months of learning the skill, she had lost a whopping 40lbs and had begun to enjoy the twisting thanks to instructional DVD's from Hooopnotica .

Mrs Moore's fitness kick began in 2008 after she was asked to leave a fairground ride when the safety bar would not close over her stomach.

A cyclical, linear story: Mrs Moore changed her lifestyle after being asked to leave a fairground ride in 2008 because the safety bar would not close over her stomach



Addicted to eating, she and her husband, Keith, had to reexamine their approach to food and the way they mindlessly ate out of boredom, as well as their lazy lifestyle.



Recalling past attempts to lose weight the hula-hoop instructor said: 'We had both tried dieting in the past; I was the queen of yo-yo dieting. It just didn't work.'

But after the humiliation of the fairground incident, Mrs Moore was determined to lose weight and provide a better example for her then baby girl.

Before: Jen and her husband Keith were both obese on account of year of lazy, mindless eating. They changed their unhealthy lifestyle together to set an example for their children

Happy family: The couple and their two children now approach their eating from a different perspective and enjoy eating fruits and vegetables instead of chips and sugary foods

'That day, I pledged to return to the theme park with my child the following year,' she remembered. 'This time as the healthier, slimmer, hot mom!'

Mrs Moore started gently and privately, taking a hoop to the local basketball court and trying to familiarise herself with the movement.



'It took me over two weeks just to be able to keep the hoop spinning around my waist, but from day one, I felt a tremendous difference in my core strength, confidence and energy,' she gushed on the healthy living blog.

Tail spin: A promotional shot for Hoopnotica's outdoor classes. The company's instructional DVD's helped Mrs Moore lose the 143lbs

The reinvigorated exercise fan also changed her diet, splitting her Starbucks skinny Frappuccinos with her husband and reaching for grapes instead of chips when she was reading or watching television.

Explaining the difference in her routine she said: 'We eat healthy now and make sure our kids do, too. We are cultivating our kids' taste buds to like healthy foods. We don't want our kids to become obese and suffer like we did for so long. We are empowering our kids to make the right food choices.

No excuses: Hoopnotica has created an easy to carry hula hoop that's just like carrying a yoga mat



Obesity runs in our family. We never say the words "we were fat." We make sure to use the right words around our kids. We were unhealthy. We couldn't do all the fun activities we wanted to do.'