Danni, 37, switched to the ‘lion’s diet’ last October
A woman who feels she has been “born again” after losing more than 38 stone with a “lion’s diet” is fundraising for loose skin removal surgeries to help her find love. Danni Pryor, 37, from Milton Keynes, standing 5ft (154cm), has always struggled with her weight – she was a size 28 and weighed 26st when she underwent weight loss surgery, aged 22.
Due to complications afterwards, however, Danni said she reached her heaviest weight of 49st 6lbs (314kg), with family members “painfully” commenting: “You must be liquidising Mars bars.” In 2023, Danni started the keto diet but later switched to a “lion’s diet”, primarily consisting of meat, butter and eggs, after being inspired by nurse and bodybuilder Eddie Abbew in October 2024.
Weighing 10st 8lbs (67kg) currently, she now eats one steak-based meal a day and walks regularly with her St Bernard dog, Diablo – but says the excess skin on her abdomen, arms and thighs causes daily discomfort, as well as affecting her confidence and dating prospects.
Recently, her personal assistant, Florence, encouraged her to set up a GoFundMe page to raise the £14,000 needed for surgery – something Danni hopes will help her start her own business, run a marathon, find love and potentially even become a mother. “When I tried some new clothes on recently, all I could see was my loose skin, my thighs underneath,” Danni told PA Real Life.
“It was horrendous, quite frankly. It’s frustrating when you put in so much hard work but you’re still not where you want to be. Every day is a challenge to get dressed.”
Danni said she never realised she was “the fat kid” at school, but she believes large portions growing up and regular takeaways contributed to her size. “My mum didn’t think the portions the dietitian recommended were big enough, and weekends at my dad’s involved takeaways and pub visits,” she said.
She said her father would often order Chinese food and take her to an Indian buffet on a Sunday. Her mother would feed her Lidl cottage pies, which she said cost £1 for four at the time, as well as chicken nuggets and chips. She said her mother did make home-cooked meals, such as chilli and bolognese sauce, but Danni feels the meat was low-quality and the portions were too big.
She said her parents fed her with the best intentions but lacked the right guidance – and she was referred to a dietitian aged five as she weighed more than 5st aged three. At secondary school, Danni said she began to feel different from her peers, weighing more than 13st aged 13.
“I was getting bullied, and I had to stand up for myself – luckily I had the weight behind me to be able to do that,” she said. At 15, she said she was asked to leave home and was placed in the care system. Danni said she had “emotional eating problems” that she tried to control through dieting.
She would binge on chocolate and takeaways and said it did not help that she lived above a kebab shop. Danni’s emotional eating took her to 32st, and she said one of her ex-partners was her full-time carer. She had a commode in her bedroom and a bidet wash facility in the bathroom, as well as a stand-up bed to help her get up.
It took her two hours to shower with the help of a carer in a wet room. “It was a very difficult, lonely time in my life,” said Danni.
“I just had enough at one point but I’m not really sure when. I thought, I deserve a good life and the only way I’m going to get that is if I start loving myself – then maybe other people will put time and effort into me.”
She said she began to “sort her own life out” with the help of doctors and social services. One of the first significant steps was pursuing gastric bypass surgery in her 20s, which she hoped would help her address her weight issues.
In 2010, aged 22, she said she had a gastric bypass through the NHS at Luton Hospital. Danni said she prepared for her gastric bypass surgery by following a liquid diet, as well as daily swimming, to drop from a size 42 and 29st 6lbs to a size 28 and 26st to be eligible for the procedure.
After the surgery, Danni managed to shrink to a size 16 – but she said complications followed after her blood glucose and haemoglobin levels dropped. “I got gallstones, and then malnutrition resulted in hair loss, brittle nails, sleepless nights and inflammation,” Danni said.
She said she had to have blood transfusions and was told that she had to be hospitalised due to low iron levels. “I ended up in a wheelchair, on strong medications and using a social care-funded bariatric bed,” she said. This led her to regain weight after the gastric bypass surgery, getting up to her heaviest weight of 49st 6lbs (314kg).
“It was emotionally painful because my family would say, ‘You must be liquidising Mars bars’,” she said. “I think there’s a huge misunderstanding that you gorge yourself to get in that way.
“But I was on a lot of strong medications for pain relief that didn’t make me get out of bed for days, which meant I was an inactive person – it wasn’t all diet related.”
Danni decided to stop taking as many opioids to manage her chronic pain and began researching alternatives for sustainable weight loss. She discovered Eddie Abbew’s Facebook page in October 2024 and, inspired by his advice, she adopted a “lion’s diet” – eating steak cooked in butter with salt, eggs and cheese, and occasionally berries or mango to manage her sugar cravings.
She said she typically eats once a day between 3.30pm and 5pm, drinks bone broth in the mornings and spends up to £100 a week on groceries to buy grass-fed beef and uncultured butter. She also began exercising while still using a wheelchair, going swimming five times a week with help from her mother and a Motability car fitted with a lift.
She said she used ice packs to manage inflammation from exercise. “I just decided that it was either staying in the wheelchair and being on benefits forever, or just getting on with it,” Danni explained.
Danni was driven to improve her dog’s life too – he is now nine-and-a-half. “I just wanted to give him a really good quality of life in the last few years,” she said. Now weighing 10st 8lbs (67kg), Danni said she can mow her garden unaided – but loose skin still limits her mobility and self-esteem, and she also struggles with body dysmorphia.
“When it gets hot, my legs and arms chafe together,” she said. “I have to wear bodycon stuff nearly every day. When I look in the mirror, I’m not really sure that it’s my body. It feels like my body is on somebody else’s body.”
To address this, she is raising funds for a “life-changing” series of procedures, including abdominoplasty and arm and thigh lifts. Danni said she raised £2,500 within just 30 minutes of the fundraising page going live, thanks to Eddie Abbew being the first to donate and share the campaign, with the total now standing at more than £7,200.
She will be travelling to Irmet Hospital International in Turkey on September 10 for the first series of procedures, which will cost £6,200. These include a tummy tuck, a mons lift – a procedure to remove excess tissue and skin from the pubic area – a breast uplift and implants, as well as muscle repair and limited liposuction.
However, through the GoFundMe page, Danni hopes to raise the additional funds to cover an extended arm lift and thigh lift, which would cost £4,375, as well as the cost of her flights. While some have been unkind, posting comments such as, “Why support someone that got to the size of an elephant?”, Danni said she has been “overwhelmed” by the support she has received.
Now, her goal is to launch her own skincare business after starting to sell homemade body cream at local fairs, and she also dreams of one day running a marathon. Ultimately, she hopes to find love, too.
“I’d like someone tall, that loves my dog – just someone kind and genuine,” she said. “I feel like I’m being born again. I have no idea what my life holds, but I’m ready, whatever life throws at me.”
To donate to Danni’s fundraiser, visit: gofundme.com/f/dannis-journey-to-renewed-confidence.
