The Stunning Transformation Of Mama June

June "Mama June" Shannon shed a ton (well, close enough to it) of weight for her new series, Mama June: From Not to Hot. The Here Comes Honey Boo Boo matriarch went from 460 pounds to a size 4! Here's how the one-time "Coupon Queen" made herself over inside and out.

She keeps herself busy

Mama June admits that a big part of her weight loss was just keeping herself occupied with activities other than food. "Honestly, when I first started losing weight, it was just being more active, being busy with the show and doing more things with Here Comes Honey Boo Boo," she told In Touch Weekly.

Now that the show is on the outs with TLC, here's hoping she's able to keep up the healthier habits. She's doing well so far at staying busy. She and estranged common law husband Michael "Sugar Bear" Thompson appeared on WE tv's Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars in 2015, and she frequently makes appearances at parties and meet and greets, so her schedule is still relatively packed.

She walks everywhere

In November 2015, Mama June revealed to the Daily Mail that walking three to five miles per day played a huge role in her weight loss. "Once you get started with the kids you don't think about it," she said. "You're walking and you're like 'I've already walked three miles!'"

She has a personal trainer

Professional help is always a good thing when it comes to getting healthy. Mama June told In Touch that working with a personal trainer made a huge difference in her weight loss, from offering helpful tips to holding her accountable for various lifestyle choices.

"I met with this trainer [Natasha Fett] through my manager," she said. "Even though she's 3,000 miles away, she's still very supportive through everything. I'm just walking through the neighborhood three miles a day, and just keeping up with that and just keeping up with the kids and just kind of being on the go all the time." Mama June also noted on Instagram (via Us Weekly) that Fett was always a text or a call away for encouragement and positive reinforcement about good choices.

She underwent weight loss surgery

The New York Daily News reported in March 2016 that Mama June decided to undergo weight loss surgery after regular dieting caused her to faint and put her at risk for some other health problems. Mama June lost 90 pounds, and reportedly wanted to lose another 80 or so to reach her goal weight. Dr. Christine Ren-Fielding, who has not specifically treated Mama June, told the paper that the reality star's gastric sleeve surgery is a bit different from traditional gastric bypass surgery. "It sounds horrible that you're amputating 80 percent of the stomach, but your digestive tract stays completely intact, unlike gastric bypass, which attaches the small intestine directly to the top of the stomach. The gastric sleeve is sort of like changing from bellbottom jeans to skinny jeans."

Don't think Mama June is looking for an easy out with her surgery, because she'll still have work to do afterward. She'll go on a liquid diet for months following the procedure, and Dr. Ren-Fielding adds, "After that, it's still up to [Mama June] to maintain a healthy lifestyle. People still have to eat healthy and exercise, or the weight will creep back. But think of how much easier it is to exercise after you've shed that first 80 pounds."

Mama June also got a little help losing weight from one particular area: she underwent a procedure called "cool sculpting" to remove her double chin after losing a whopping 150 pounds.

She's eating less, juicing, and watching her calories

Remember how Mama June and the kids loved "sketti," the totally unappetizing concoction of spaghetti, ketchup, and butter? There's a lot less of it in the house lately. She admitted on Instagram (via Us Weekly) that she and daughter Alana "Honey Boo Boo" Thompson have been eating smaller portions. They also appear to have switched from "Go-Go Juice" — Alana's former pre-pageant potion of Red Bull and Mountain Dew — to tried and true H2O. Mama June has also endorsed green smoothies, admitting via Instagram, "I hate greens and vegetables, so I juice 3 days a [week]."

She has a supportive team

Mama June isn't in this alone. She's been on this journey with daughters Alana and Lauryn "Pumpkin" Thompson — all three have reportedly been dieting and walking together. Mama June announced via a since-deleted Instagram post that in the first month on their program with Fett, Alana dropped eight pounds, Pumpkin lost 26 pounds, and Mama June shed 45 pounds. Having familial support not only means a lot of encouragement and high morale, but also added accountability and less likelihood of finding "cheat" foods in the house.

She's realistic

When Mama June went on Botched in the summer of 2016, she didn't get the news she wanted: she was still a little too overweight to undergo surgery to remove excess skin. "BMI is the way we doctors figure out who's an appropriate candidate for surgery and who should lose some more weight," Dr. Terry Dubrow explained on the show. "At 5-foot-6, 245, your BMI is 39, OK? So we like to see a BMI of like 28, so you lose 75 pounds, you come back to us, we'll remove that and make you happy."

Mama June was compliant, saying, "Dr. Dubrow gave me a lot of good information and hopefully in a couple months I'll be back and make them kind of proud and say, 'OK, yeah, we're gonna do surgery now. This will be my reward for everything that I've done."

She got some cosmetic surgery

Pumpkin told Entertainment Tonight, "Her stomach started looking gross [after losing a lot of weight]. It was hanging from where she lost so much weight, and her arms and her chin, so she got [the skin on] her stomach removed." Pumpkin also revealed that Mama June had cosmetic surgery on her breasts, though her terminology was confusing. "She got her boobies done," she said. "She went from a 44 long to a 36 up." We're guessing she meant that Mama June went from a 44 band size to a perkier 36 with the aid of weight loss and a breast lift, but it remains unclear.

She cut out late-night snacking

Mama June reportedly gets cravings when the kids go to bed, but thankfully Pumpkin is nocturnal enough to keep her in check. "Most of the time I'm up late at night anyways, but I tell her like, 'Momma, you can't do that,'" Pumpkin told Entertainment Tonight. "I have to show her [old] pictures of her sometimes, and she's like, 'I can't even believe that's me.' I'm like, 'If you don't stop eating that junk, you're going to go right back!'"

She got motivated

Mama June admitted that she needed a big motivator to finally put the work in to lose weight, and her reasons went beyond getting healthy: She wanted revenge! When she found her ex, Mike "Sugar Bear" Thompson, was getting married and wanted her to be there, Mama June decided it was time to get her act together and get her body in better shape in order to get a "hot date" to bring to the nuptials. However, her longtime platonic pal, "Big Mike," advised her that she needs to change for herself and not to get back at her ex.

Mama June didn't want to just make Sugar Bear regret cheating on her back in the day, though — she also wanted to find a new man to love, and a disastrous Tinder date with a jerk named Jeff sealed the deal for her to get fit and make herself a catch.

She chose to foot the bill for her weight loss herself

Mama June was so serious about her makeover that she didn't even wait for WeTV to even offer to foot the bill for her surgeries, despite them being documented on Mama June: From Not to Hot. "I had to pay, just like everybody else," told The Domenick Nati Show. "[The surgery] was going to happen whether I had them [foot the bill] or not."

She added, "If you get the skin removal surgery done without anything before, you're liable to have to spend your money and do it again." In addition to said skin removal surgery on her arms and neck, Mama June revealed that she also underwent a tummy tuck and a breast lift — and that's it. "I'm definitely not going to have any more [surgery]," she said.

However, she's not against it in general, telling host Nati, "If it would make [people] more confident, then yes, I would recommend the surgery. You have to do your research, definitely, and that's what got me into the gastric sleeve. That helps you lose as much weight as possible."

She goes to great lengths to hide her new body

Some eagle-eyed fans noticed that in some scenes of Mama June: From Not To Hot, Mama June appears to be wearing a fat suit and facial prosthetics in "before" scenes, indicating that they may have actually been filmed after she lost some of the weight. While it wouldn't be the first time reality TV wasn't, well, real, and daughter Pumpkin may have admitted as much in an interview with Entertainment Tonight about the struggles of keeping her mama's new body hidden and disguised until the show's finale airs in April.

"It is very hard because mama, she is a very stubborn person, and she wants to do everything," Pumpkin said. "She's like, 'Alright, I've got to go to the store,' and we're like, 'Mama, no, you need to stay in the house because if somebody gets a picture with you...' Even if she does go out, she has to be, like, suited up."

She denies all the fat suit rumors

Mama June was accused of wearing a fat suit and prosthetics on Mama June: From Not To Hot in order to conceal her new body ahead of her big reveal in the season finale in April 2017, but she denies it.

"I don't know what the hell people were thinking, but no, I would never do that," she told Us Weekly. "This journey started a long time ago. We started filming a little bit and then through the process, we had stopped and there's nothing... no, hell no, you're seeing me for me. If you look back, you're seeing me at the doctor's office, you're seeing me this and that, so that's actually me being me.... I mean, I guess now that people are seeing the transformation happen, they're like, 'Whoa! That didn't happen that fast!' I've been going through this journey since May of 2016, so it has been a little while."

However, Alana may have blown up her mom's spot when she told People, "It's been really hard for her [to stay hidden], because my mama is not just a person who can stay in the house. My mama is very outgoing and stubborn. So when she's like, 'Let's go to the grocery store,' we're like, 'You can't, because you have to stay in hiding, you know.' And then she's just like, 'No, I have to go out, I'll just put on big clothes and they will never see me.' The craziest disguise that she's done, she went out with this big jacket on, glasses, a hat and a scarf. She went overboard."

She's trying to see herself in a new light

Mama June doesn't quite love reminiscing about her old body because she genuinely feels like a thinner person now. "If people look back at my picture [pre-surgery], like a couple of years ago, um, I was fat," she told Us Weekly. "I don't really even look at them, honestly because I don't feel like that's me. And that comes back from me mentally picturing myself as being a smaller person."

She joined a support group for help

Though Mama June has a pretty solid support system with her family and friends, after a brief backslide during her weight loss journey, she sought help from a support group.

In the March 24, 2017 episode of Mama June: From Not To Hot (via Us Weekly), Mama June said in a confessional clip, "I'm joining a small weight-loss support group. Even though I threw out all my junk food, it would be great to get some help to keep the weight off long-term. I mean, I'm really nervous about walking into a room of people I don't know and talking about my overeating. I'm scared, but I've got to do something."

Once she went to the support group, she told her peers, "I've tried to change my life. I was doing pretty good until I had to go meet my ex-boyfriend's fiancée. She wants my daughter to be in the wedding, and then he wants all of us to be in the wedding. And then I just fell off the wagon. It was just too much."

Her motivation for losing weight changed

On the Mama June: From Not To Hot finale, Mama June underwent surgery to remove her excess skin from her neck, arms, abdomen and legs. "I'm ready to get the surgery over with and remove my turkey neck, but I'm kind of going to miss my turkey neck," she admitted on the season finale. "It's more famous than I am!"

When she recovered (which took three weeks away from her home and family), Mama June made her size 4 debut, leaving Alana and company with their jaws on the ground for quite a while. (Alana even cooed that Mama June looked like Marilyn Monroe!) The newly hot mama explained, "It makes me feel really good to show other people this is what I've always thought of myself and that my inside hadn't changed, like my giving and outgoing and loving personality that was there when I was there." She added, "It's just a little bit more out there ... I feel like [I'm] becoming the person on the outside that I always felt like [I was] on the inside."

She also revealed in the episode that her motivation changed throughout the show. "My goal when I first started this weight loss journey was to make Sugar Bear kind of jealous. But it's no longer about revenge. Doing all the surgeries really took a toll on me — not just physically, but emotionally," she said. "I don't want to disappoint everybody and not be the skinny Mama June that everybody is looking forward to.... it can't be about making everyone happy — it's got to be about me."

She regained her confidence

Both Pumpkin and Alana revealed that Mama June's new look also affected her confidence. "I think that her biggest thing [she has to] overcome is that fact that she still thinks of herself as a bigger person, because, even to this day, like, a couple of days ago we had a conversation, and... she looked in the mirror and was like, 'I'm still fat,'" Pumpkin told Entertainment Tonight. "And I guess because she's seen herself as a bigger person all these years, she doesn't realize how small she is."

Her trainer, Kenya Crooks, added, "That's what she's used to doing, and when you're a bigger person, that's how you disguise all of that — through wearing bigger clothes... we're having to transform her mind even more so... because she has curves now, she looks awesome."

It's starting to work, perhaps too well, according to Pumpkin. "I'm not trying to be all R-rated or whatever, but, she'll walk around the house in a pair of underwear!" Pumpkin said. "I'm like, 'June, put your pants on, put your pants on!'"