When Jennifer Sheehan was 25, she was on the verge of depression, weighed 450 pounds and suffered from uncontrollable eating disorders.

Jennifer, who is from Condell Park in NSW and was working as a childminder at the time, amazingly consumed a milkshake made from a litre of milk and numerous scoops of ice cream every morning, ate two large McDonald’s meals for lunch and a 500g packet of boiled pasta thickly covered in cheese for dinner.

RELATED: This Woman Had the Best Response to a Man Who Told Her to Lose Weight

And although Jennifer suffered a stroke in her sleep that year that left her with lost vision in her right eye, it wasn’t until a year later, in 2006, when Sheehan was involved in a car accident, that she got the wake-up call she so desperately needed.

“This morning I was involved in a serious car accident that ended with me crashing head first into a traffic light pole. I was driving a van and on impact the car collapsed on top of me and literally cut my right leg so deeply that my bone was exposed,” Jennifer told Yahoo7 Lifestyle.

Jennifer weighed more than ever (216 kg) and was in a coma for two weeks. She lost almost all the muscle mass in her right leg, had to go into the operating room six times and received several blood transfusions.

Five weeks after the accident, she was still in hospital, unable to walk, and realizing the severity of her injuries.

“I thought I’ve been given a second chance and I’m not going to waste it. I took the bull by the horns, as they say, and started changing my life. Getting my weight under control was the first thing I had to do,” she said.

“It took three years before I could actually stand up and walk properly – to the point where I could be considered normal. I was still heavily dependent on a walking aid.”

RELATED TOPIC: How healthy eating can lead to weight gain

The young woman’s destructive eating habits were the result of years of bullying and teasing about her weight.

When she was seven years old, Jennifer was teased by her classmates because she weighed 40 kg. Her weight continued to increase and by the age of 12 she was already 100 kg and a size 14.

Shortly before she left school, Jennifer’s 8th grade class was asked to measure her BMI, weigh herself, and share the results with everyone. She was 18 years old, weighed 140 kg, and was a size 24/26.

Two years after her car accident, the 28-year-old was still in hospital for infections, with each hospital stay lasting between two and four weeks. During this time, she met Canadian Ron on an online gaming forum.

“I didn’t send him a photo of myself until six months after we started talking,” she said.

“At that point we said, ‘You know what, let’s meet up.’ What I didn’t know was that he was actually following me on Facebook, so he already knew what I looked like. When I finally sent him a photo, he said, ‘I’ve known you look like that for months,’ and I said, ‘And you’re still hanging out, what the hell is wrong with you?'”

At 30, on crutches and weighing 400 pounds, Jennifer packed her bags and moved across the world to Canada to be with Ron, telling her family it would only be a three-month trip.

Within four months, the two became engaged and their three-month stay turned into two years. However, when Jennifer’s grandfather sadly passed away in 2011, she became homesick.

“He saw how hard I was struggling, so he said to me, ‘You know what, how about we move to Australia? Let’s wait a couple of years, if we like it we’ll stay, if not we’ll come back,'” she said.

Two weeks before their planned return to NSW, the couple sent Jennifer’s family a surprise wedding invitation in the mail.

“My family didn’t know we were returning to Australia until two weeks before we arrived and then they received our wedding invitation.”

Two weeks after returning home in 2012, the couple married and when they decided they wanted children, Jennifer knew she had to lose weight.

“That’s when I decided to have gastric sleeve surgery,” says Jennifer.

“So 75 percent of my stomach was removed.”

Since then, Jennifer, now 36, has gone down from a size 38 when she was at her heaviest to a size between 12 and 16, depending on the store and the cut of the clothing.

The young woman has exceeded her weight loss goal of 95 kg, now weighs 86 kg and has set herself the goal of losing 10 to 15 kg of her excess skin.

“I work out six days a week. I get up at 5 a.m. every morning. Before work, I go to the gym for an hour. I leave the gym at 7 a.m., I’m home by 7:15 a.m., jump in the shower, grab some breakfast and then I go to work,” she said.

“In the afternoon I leave work at 5 p.m., go to the gym for another hour at 5.40 p.m. and then come home and go for a walk with my husband.

Despite this extraordinary weight loss, Jennifer is unfortunately left with a lot of excess skin that her doctor will have to remove in three separate surgeries, which would cost a whopping $55,000.

“It’s really uncomfortable, I keep getting skin infections and the sweat smells really bad and I notice it,” said Jennifer.

“I have to have it done for health reasons. Because it’s too big, he has to split it – that’s why I need three operations.”

In hopes of raising the money, Jennifer set up a GoFundMe page where she shared pictures of her body for the first time.

“I am a very private person. No one has seen me naked except my mother and my husband, and these photos are a big challenge for me,” she said.

“This is completely outside my comfort zone.”

Jennifer currently continues to eat healthy, works as an employment coordinator at an employment agency for people with disabilities, and hopes to become pregnant with her first child soon.

“I still have hope, even though I’m pretty sure it won’t happen,” she said.

“We started looking into IVF last year because we had been trying for about five years and nothing had been achieved.”

To donate to Jennifer’s fund, click here.