'Basketball Wives' Star Laura Govan's Health Crisis and Inspiring Weight Loss
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Entrepreneur, author, and TV personality Laura Govan opens up about her struggles with her postpartum weight, public bullying, and a secret health crisis.
When Laura debuted on the series “Basketball Wives,” she had just delivered her fourth child and weighed 234 pounds. The fact that she was a new mom didn’t stop some viewers from being publicly cruel. “I was called fat girl and all these names,” she says. However, Laura didn’t need public pressure to be concerned about her weight. “Before I had any babies, I was 117 pounds,” she says. “This is not who I am! I have never felt so uncomfortable in my own body.”
Laura set a goal weight of 130 pounds. “I had to change my whole lifestyle,” she explains. “I do running, weightlifting, conditioning. I fell in love with yoga.”
But her weight was not Laura’s only health issue. She says she kept getting recurrent yeast infections and realized that her body couldn’t handle sugar. “I just try to eat a lot of green stuff, stay hydrated. I eat a lot of kale, spinach, green apples, cucumbers. I always have my apple-cider vinegar!”
It took Laura near a year to lose the weight. Her advice to other women is simple: “Once you learn to live in your own skin, everything else just falls into place.”
“You mentioned you have a problem with vaginal yeast infections, is that correct?” says Ob/Gyn Dr. Nita Landry. Laura says she does, but Dr. Landry isn’t sure that yeast is really the cause of her symptoms.
Watch: Relief for Chronic Yeast Infection
“A lot of times people will just call the doctor’s office and get a prescription for a vaginal yeast infection without being properly diagnosed,” Dr. Landry explains, “So it’s important for women to go in and have a swab so that your doctor can look at the swab under a microscope to make sure we’re treating the appropriate thing.”
“I’m glad we’re talking about this because it’s really important,” ER Physician Dr. Travis Stork. Recurrent infections are a sign that something’s wrong, and treating the infection isn’t enough without treating the underlying cause.
