Mila De Jesus, a social media influencer who garnered a strong following after chronicling her weight loss journey on Instagram, has died. She was 35.
The Boston-based Brazilian’s daughter, Anna Clara, shared the news on Instagram on Monday with a black and white photo of her mother. The photo also included message in Portuguese announcing Mila’s death.
“I, Anna Clara, am posting this condolence note,” Anna captioned the post, translated to English. “We are very sad to hear of the passing of our beautiful mother. We appreciate all the prayers and condolences. Continue to pray for us. Thank you.”
The cause of death and the circumstances behind Mila’s death are not known. In October, Mila shared on Instagram that for three months she had been battling psoriasis that affected 80 percent of her body. According to the Mayo Clinic, psoriasis is a skin disease that causes a rash with itchy, scaly patches. Mila shared photos of the skin disease ravaging her body.
But just the months after sharing the psoriasis ordeal, Mila uploaded a before-and-after pic of her weight loss progress.
“13 years between one picture … 6 years since a decision that changed my life in so many ways,” she captioned her post, translated from Portuguese. “On one side Mila aged 22 and on the other, Mila aged 35. How much we change, huh? How we grow and how we learn. Girl pride.”
Mila, who underwent gastric bypass surgery in 2017, had nearly 70,000 followers on Instagram, where she documented her radical body transformation. She lost so much weight that Mila required skin removal surgery. On YouTube, Mila had more than 103,000 subscribers to her channel, where she mainly offered makeup tutorials.
According to her Instagram account, Mila was a newlywed after marrying her husband, George Kowszik, this past September.
Mila is survived by her four children and husband.
