OH! Magazine - Australian Version June 2014 (Australian Version) | Page 6

TONI
KRASICKI

SHARON
BASSET
Toni Krasicki explores the successful
transformation of Sharon Basset,
a finalist on the most recent season
of The Biggest Loser.
f you met Sharon ‘Shaz’ Basset a year ago you wouldn’t
recognise the woman she has become today. Gregarious
and confident, it’s hard to believe that apart from going to work,
she rarely used to leave the house. One of four finalists of the
latest The Biggest Loser Challenge Australia, Sharon shed a
whopping 40kg, around 37 per cent of her body weight,
and trimmed down to just under 70kg, becoming a shining
example to others that anything is possible.
For those who didn’t tune in to the last season of The
Biggest Loser, the contestants were recruited from the
small Victorian town of Ararat. Statistics showed the
town as Australia’s fattest with 68 per cent of the
population identified as overweight. Today the town is
proud to have shaken its unhealthy status and to now claim
the title of being the fittest town! Sharon says that the
changes are phenomenal. The streets are filled with people
walking around in fitness gear, the local YMCA gym has a
surge in memberships, and new personal training businesses
have popped up since the show aired.
Answering an ad in the local newspaper alongside hundreds
of others, Sharon saw it as her chance to change her life and
her ‘I’ve given up’ mindset. At her heaviest, Sharon tipped the
scales at 118kg, and no diet she tried could undo the weight
that started creeping on since her teenage years after she
stopped playing sport and started partying and eating poorly.
Motherhood then shifted her focus and she resigned herself to
being overweight and unbeknown to others, unhappy.

I

‘Anyone can do it [lose weight
and get fit]. I am just a simple
full time mum that had no idea
at the start’.
Follow Sharon’s journey at
www.facebook.com/
teamsharontbl

The day her life changed was the day that The Biggest
Loser trainer, Shannan Ponton, made a surprise visit.
‘He actually came to my house while I was out the front

6

JUNE 2014 ( OH! MAGAZINE )

tonikrasicki.com.au

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