This 86-year-old grandmother went from a size 22 to a 4 by taking long morning walks — in her one-bedroom apartment. “I chose losing weight over staying fat,” says St. Louis grandmother Jessica Slaughter, who lost 120 pounds with her daily 3,000 step routine boogieing between her kitchen and living room. This energetic vision in purple sweats and sparkly slippers says she struggled with obesity for decades. “Even as a kid in Mississippi, I was always the fattest kid in the class. I got teased a lot,” she tells KSDK News, her local NBC affiliate. “I didn’t know how to stop eating. Fried chicken. Bacon and eggs. Desserts, like cakes and pies.” The Mississippi-born senior’s turning point: “I didn’t want to just die like that.” Now, her fridge is packed with veggies, and she’s not only committed to her walking routine, but she’s also quit alcohol and gone vegan. To help measure her progress, her granddaughter advised Slaughter to invest in some new tech: “[She] told me ‘Mama, get you a Fitbit.’ I said ‘What the hell is a Fitbit?'” As part of a growing silver wave of fit and fab seniors, Slaughter hopes other older folks will follow and find hope in her example. “I just want seniors to know just because we’ve gotten a certain age, we don’t have to stop living,” Slaughter says. “I want to tell them that there’s a better way of life if they choose.”

New York Post