A mum-of-two has dropped a whopping 57kg and has taken an inspiring time-lapse video to show it.
But what spurred that complete overhaul to Justine McCabe’s life was instead marred with sadness – the suicide of her husband.
“The death of my husband shook me awake and made me realise I needed to make a lot of changes,” Justine, from LA, told The Mirror.
“I knew if I could survive living without my husband and Mum then I should push my boundaries and limits to face all fears I had, to live a life they would be proud of,” she recalled.
Justine, 31, says she’s been overweight since she was a teenager and has unsuccessfully tried fad diets.
But after the death of her husband, she changed her diet, joined a gym and began working out six times a week.
She began cutting down her portion sizes and eating healthier foods.
“I was always snacking between meals, I used to eat a lot of processed food like candy, doughnuts, cookies … anything quick and convenient,” she said.
“It really affected my confidence. I was known as ‘the big giant girl’ because of my height and weight, and to deal with that embarrassment I comfort ate more. It was a vicious cycle.”
As if the complete change in lifestyle wasn’t challenging enough, she began facing her fears with cliff jumping, parasailing and more.
“Every challenge I tackled made me feel more alive and brought me back it life, it kept me fuelled to keep going on and living.”
To motivate herself, she took a selfie every day to document her transformation. Her Instagram page @Hairstargetsfit is full of inspirational musings, like “There is nothing you cannot be, do or have. Live with no regrets and don’t ever give up. This is what drives me. My motivation.”
“I now feel like I’m a different person. I chase my dreams and am truly living,” she says.
A high school in north-west Sydney has enforced gender-neutral rules that help avoid discrimination and support LGBTI students.
Teachers at elite public school Cheltenham Girls School are now no longer allowed to use the words ‘girls’, ‘ladies’ or ‘women’, but instead refer to pupils in gender-neutral terms like ‘students’.
There are many pro-gender equality events at the school, like ‘Wear it Purple Day’, ‘Rainbow Day’ and a ‘Queer-straight Alliance’ club.
However, some parents have started petitions as they feel that if their child does not participate in LGBTI activities then they will be ostracised.
The Daily Telegraph reports that if teachers don’t comply with the change in language, they are homophobic and breaking the law according to a NSW anti-discrimination act.
Education Minister Adrian Piccoli is investigating the complaints.
Trending video: Vincent Stanford pleads guilty to murder of Stephanie Scott
New mum Tig Notaro has shared a photo of her twin sons Max and Finn – while showing off her mastectomy scars from her battle with bilateral breast cancer.
Scroll down for video
The 45-year-old comedian shared the image on Twitter and Facebook writing, “This is my life.”
The gorgeous boys were born via surrogate to Notaro and wife Stephanie Allynne on June 26.
She’s now cancer free and happily married.
Congratulations on the birth of your little boys AND for beating cancer, Tig.
Trending video: Vincent Stanford pleads guilty to murder of teacher Stephanie Scott
Macaulay Culkin is many things – a former child star, an icon, an enigma.
But in a new interview with The Guardian the 35-year-old wants you to know he most definitely is not a drug addict.
Addressing the National Enquirer‘s 2012 report, which claimed the Home Alone actor was “pounding $6K of heroin a month” and had “nothing to live for”, the star vehemently denied the allegations.
Fears arose for the star when he appeared gaunt a few years back but Macaulay says he has never been better.
“No, I was not pounding six grand of heroin every month or whatever,” Macaulay explained to the publication. “Actually, I’m very much at peace lately,” he added.
As for keeping out of the spotlight, it’s a choice he’s actively made. “I don’t just turn my back [on fame], I actively don’t want it.”
These days the New York local dabbles with acting, including a role on The Jim Gaffigan Show, and his comedy rock band, The Pizza Underground, also keeps him busy.
Watch Macaulay charm the crowds back in 1991. Post continues after the video!
Loading the player...
With an estimated net worth of around $USD15 million, Macaulay is content being picky with what he works on.
“People feel they have to be in perpetual motion, or drown. I’ve never had a problem saying I’ve got nothing lined up. Maybe I’ll take the next year off,” he explained during the candid chat.
As for if he has any regrets, the actor says he wouldn’t change a thing.
“Regrets sounds too negative. It’s allowed me to become the person I am, and I like me, so I wouldn’t change a thing. Not having to do anything for my dinner, financially, lets me treat every gig like it’s the last.”
Then and now: Macaulay, pictured with his girlfriend at the time Mila Kunis back in 2004, looks markedly different.
Speaking on The Howard Stern Show on SiriusXM, the actress admitted his fame came with its own set of challenges.
“He was huge. You couldn’t walk down the street with him,” Mila revealed.
“He always had this weird attraction, like fans just screamed when they saw him! They didn’t know how to react. It wasn’t like a normal response to a celebrity. Fans responded in a very abnormal way to him,” Mila, who is now married to Ashton Kutcher, said.
For a brief period of time, Prince William lived a normal life, unawares of what the future held for him.
However, it wasn’t long before he appeared on the Buckingham Palace balcony, waving to the crowds below.
His life was broadcast in front of many but in the early stages, when he was just five years old, the little prince wanted to be a policeman “so I can protect Mummy,” whom he often saw in tears as her marriage to Charles moved into crisis.
However, The Daily Mail also reports that Wills soon switched his life ambition to becoming an astronaut. And then, a fire-eater.
Former Young Australian of the Year finalist and Street Swags charity founder Jean Madden has been charged with fraud.
The 36-year-old will face court today charged with one count of dishonestly causing detriment.
It is alleged she racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in unauthorised expenses. She released a video a few days ago, defending the claims. “To have misappropriated $441,000, which is what I’m accused of, is physically impossible, because it’s more than the total expenditure for the entire organisation,” she said.
The non-for-profit charity provides “basic shelter to people experiencing homelessness,” according to its Facebook page.
She founded the charity in 2010 and designed canvas bags that converts to bedding.
Madden was reportedly sacked from the charity earlier this year after it was alleged that she took over the website and emails, claiming the charity was closed.
The Street Swags website does indeed say it is currently closed, with a statement saying: “Street Swags is closed for business until the management issues can be resolved and a full audit of the company finances can be undertaken.”
The Facebook page, however, says that the organisation is still running.
When people hear “sex industry”, they assume prostitution or porn. We’re not in either of those businesses, we sell sex toys.
My son Chris started the business back in 2009 and our latest web store, Sex Toys 247, is the culmination of everything we’ve learned over our time in the industry; best design, best features, fastest website and, of course, the most important thing to our customers, the best product range.
I joined the business in 2010 at Chris’s request. At the time, it was evident that he needed someone to take on the day-to-day management of the company so that he could spend more time on development and planning.
I was very quick to say yes to the idea of working in the business, for several reasons. It was a great opportunity to spend more time with Chris and I hoped that I could also be of assistance to him in establishing a successful enterprise. As a parent, you want your child to succeed, so to be able to play a hands-on role in helping him achieve that feels good.
This isn’t actually the first time Chris and I have been involved in a family business. When I was a young mum, I worked for my father and Chris, who was a toddler at the time, went to day care for part of the day and came into the office with me in the afternoon. Several of my cousins also worked in the business so Chris has grown up knowing that family can work successfully together.
It’s not always smooth sailing, of course. We’re both the kind of people who meet challenges head on and on occasions we lock horns because we are both strong-willed. The good thing is that we see the need to apologise, say sorry and move on.
Our business is controversial to some people, but the most common reaction I’ve had from close friends is amusement to the point of disbelief, followed by laughter and jokes based on their idea of the sort of products I might handle every day. They eventually get over it and accept that after a while you don’t see dildos and butt plugs, you just see widgets and gadgets.
I once overheard one of Chris’s friends say, “I don’t know how you can talk to your mum about the business.” I guess, as with most of us, it’s a case of not being able to imagine that our parents have intimate relationships until we reach an age where our children are thinking the same thing about us! Working in this industry means you have to have a healthy attitude toward sexuality and the fact that Chris and I can talk about the business without getting flustered is a huge positive.
I’m a customer focused all-rounder and I’ve always been able to talk to people easily so I really enjoy overseeing the majority of customer service traffic on a daily basis. However, the challenges we experience with our customers can be tough at times. Because 99% of our contact is via email, content can be misleading or misunderstood. On occasions, we are threatened and abused, but there aren’t many businesses that can honestly say their staff don’t occasionally experience this type of feedback.
Due to the nature of our business, the vast majority of our customers are unknown to us. They place an order independently and we process it remotely. Sometimes the system handles the whole thing automatically with staff only involved in the final stage. Sometimes though, a customer will phone in to place an order because they don’t like ordering online or they don’t have the skills to be able to do it.
Some customers don’t have a clue what they want and need to get some advice. They can be the easiest to work with because you can discuss their needs and the devices that might meet them and they’re often willing to try a few different toys just to determine what they might enjoy most.
When it comes to the actual products, depth of knowledge can be a challenge. We carry over 7,000 items and there are new and different toys coming out all the time. It is an extensive learning process every day.
I’ve had surprisingly few awkward moments, given the nature of the business. My most embarrassing moment was during Chris’s first holiday away from the business when he left me in charge of everything.
In the early days, we used to take all the parcels to the Post Office in large sacks at the end of the working day. Usually, I’d been asked to leave the sacks near a side door, but, on this particular occasion, the staff member behind the counter decided that she wanted to check them through their system, one by one.
Well, you guessed it; one of the parcels started to vibrate and the lady asked me what was in the package. Was I honest? Absolutely not!
There was a room full of people behind me waiting to be served, already annoyed that they had to wait for someone with sacks full of parcels and I was not going to confess that they were full of sex toys under any circumstances. I said it must be a mobile phone.
It was in fact a We-Vibe vibrator.
I breathed a sigh of relief when it stopped vibrating, but when the staff member threw it into one of the boxes on the floor behind her, it started up again! The woman decided that the parcel needed to be opened. I wasn’t going to do that!
Thankfully, the test battery charge finally ran out and I managed to get out of there without having to open the parcel. Phew!
The majority of the time, it’s fun being at SexToys247.net.au and I love working with my son. We usually find something to laugh about and, in general, it’s usually got nothing to do with the products or our industry.
So your child has asthma – but is it a passing worry or a lifelong battle?
When a child is diagnosed with asthma, parents usually have a number of questions. How serious is asthma? Will the child grow out of it? How can it be treated? It can be difficult to get clear answers, as asthma affects different children in different ways.
Asthma is one of the most common chronic childhood illnesses in Australia, affecting more than 10 per cent of children. It is characterised by lower airway inflammation and recurrent flare-ups, often triggered by irritants such as viruses, allergens, laughing, or even exercise. This is where the airway’s smooth muscle contracts, bringing with it symptoms of wheezing, breathlessness, chest tightness and coughing.
The severity of the illness can range from mild and intermittent, to life-threatening. Although the majority (75 per cent) of children have mild symptoms, and less than 5 per cent have severe asthma, children unfortunately continue to die from the illness. In 2014, six children under 14 years and five between 15 and 25 years of age died from asthma.
How severe it is deemed to be depends on the frequency of symptoms (daily, weekly, less than every six weeks, more than every six weeks), medications required to control symptoms, and lung function tests undertaken in children aged over six years.
Will they grow out of it?
The natural history of asthma also varies from one child to the next. Symptoms may begin at any age, may persist or stop, and then may recur many years later. The majority (70 per cent) of young adults with asthma have had recurrent wheeze in their preschool years. However, in a large longitudinal Australian study, two thirds of children with mild intermittent asthma did not have asthma symptoms during adulthood.
Those with more persistent or severe asthma in childhood, or those who also have hayfever, are less likely to grow out of their asthma. There is also a risk that those with asthma during childhood will have a resurgence of their symptoms during adulthood and are more at risk of developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (an umbrella term for a number of lung diseases that prevent proper breathing) in later life.
Young children under the age of five present a diagnostic dilemma. Wheeze is a common symptom with respiratory viral infections for infants and toddlers. They are unable to perform lung function tests because they cannot breathe in the way the test requires, which can help with diagnosis of asthma in older children. Some doctors call this “viral-induced wheezing”, while others call it “intermittent asthma” – which unsurprisingly leads to confusion.
The majority of these young children will not develop asthma, and the Asthma Predictive Index was developed to help identify those at lower risk. The absence of wheeze apart from with colds, no family history of asthma and no history of hayfever or eczema may be able to help predict those who will not develop asthma.
How to manage it
Management involves two main groups of therapies to control asthma symptoms and manage flare-ups. First, there is symptom relief during flare-ups, using reliever inhalers, which relax the smooth muscle of the airways and allow them to open up, such as salbutamol (the brands are called Ventolin and Asmol).
Salbutamol relaxes the muscles in the airways to stop them from contracting. Stuart B, CC BY
Second, preventer (or controller) medications aim to reduce the underlying inflammation in the airways and therefore reduce sensitivity to irritants. The mainstay of preventer treatment is inhaled corticosteroids (steroid hormones), although some children can have their asthma controlled with an oral tablet (called montelukast).
Newer treatments are being added to help manage certain subgroups, such as those with severe asthma or exercise-induced symptoms, by targeting specific molecules involved in the inflammation pathway that causes asthma.
Issues with treatment
Unfortunately, one of the biggest issues in treating asthma is patients not taking their inhaled medications correctly or as frequently as recommended by missing doses.
Inhaler techniques should be taught by a qualified professional, because if the inhaler is not used correctly the medication will not be delivered to the lungs properly. The National Asthma Council of Australia has informative videos with instructions on inhaler techniques.
All asthma patients should have a clearly written asthma action plan from their doctor or nurse that documents which medications to take regularly, which medications to take as needed, as well as when to seek a medical review. This should be reviewed every six months. The school (or pre-school) should also have an asthma first-aid plan for each child with asthma.
Environmental factors, such as dust mites, can make asthma worse. Gilles San Martin/Flickr, CC BY
Reducing environmental exposure can have a beneficial effect on symptoms for those with asthma, such as reducing second-hand tobacco smoke exposure and reducing exposure to proven allergens such as pets or dust mites.
The treatments we have are excellent in the short and medium term, but unfortunately do not cure asthma and do not prevent future flare-ups when discontinued.
Research into asthma is leading to a better understanding of what causes the disease, as well as allowing us to develop preventative strategies and personalised treatments for each child. A diagnosis of asthma, with appropriate management, shouldn’t hold any child back from doing whatever they want to do.
Controversial former deputy mayor of Auburn Salim Mehajer has taken to social media to welcome a new addition to his family.
“Introducing the latest royal to the family,” Salim posted on Facebook, alongside a picture of the newborn’s feet.
The baby, the third child for Salim’s older sister Zenah and her husband, was born at Westmead Private Hospital yesterday at 12.05pm.
Zenah, a lawyer who represented her brother when he was accused of refusing to pay $1 million in taxes last year, already has twin boys.
Salim and his sister Zenah.
The baby news comes days after Salim was banned from contacting his wife Aysha for 28 days after a court granted an apprehended violence order to protect her from him.
Despite the AVO – which will prevent the couple from being together on their one-year wedding anniversary next month – Salim has repeatedly insisted all is well in his marriage, posting numerous loved-up messages and images of Aysha on Facebook throughout the scandal.
School cleaner Vincent Stanford has pleaded guilty to the murder and rape of schoolteacher Stephanie Scott.
His guilty plea in the NSW Supreme Court comes just six weeks after his twin brother Marcus Stanford pleaded guilty at Griffith Local Court to being an accessory after the fact to murder.
Ms Scott, 26, was last seen on Easter Sunday in April 2015 at her workplace, Leeton High School, where she had gone to prepare lesson plans for the time she would be away on her honeymoon.
Loading the player...
Her body was discovered in some burnt-out scrub in Cocoparra National Park the following Friday, the day before she was due walk down the aisle to marry partner Aaron Leeson-Woolley.
.jpg?resize=380%2C285)
.png?resize=380%2C285)
.jpg?resize=380%2C285)
.png?resize=380%2C285)
