When we first met
Laura , she had just received the shock of her life. After taking Dr. Michael Roizen's aging test, the 44-year-old found out her "real age"—how old her body feels due to smoking, stress and bad diet—was actually almost 60!
After the show was over, our cameras caught up with a determined Laura. "I certainly don't want my body to be that old," she says. "This is the beginning of my journey to health, fitness, feeling good and being 44 instead of 60. This is the start."
The first stop on Laura's journey? A one-on-one wake-up call with Dr. Oz in his New York City office. "If I had to describe Laura in one word, it would be lovable. She has a great sense of humor," he says. "But I soon learned that behind the laughter is a lot of pain."
Laura says she is unhappy with her appearance and hasn't thought she was beautiful since before her 40th birthday. "One of my girlfriends at work said to me that it's like I got up one day, and my face fell," she says.
Dr. Oz says the tiny wrinkles around Laura's mouth are caused by smoking, a habit she has justified because of what happened to her mother. "She was a three pack a day-er. She quit and she gained a lot of weight, probably a hundred pounds," Laura says. "I feel that if my mother had continued to smoke, she wouldn't have gotten fat. She wouldn't have gotten sick. She wouldn't have died."
To cope with the loss of her mother, Laura says she started taking care of everyone else—except herself. "Her stress started to build, and she found a way to justify her smoking," Dr. Oz says.
