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Anna ‘Chickadee’ Cardwell Opens Up About Mama June’s Dramatic Weight Loss: She Is ‘More Confident’ (Exclusive)

A different person! Anna “Chickadee” Cardwell opened up exclusively to Us Weekly about her mother Mama June Shannon’s dramatic weight loss. The 22-year-old spoke with Us in November before her mom, 37, underwent skin removal surgery after dropping from 460 pounds to a size 4. According to Cardwell, Mama June — whose weight loss will be featured on the new WE tv series Mama June: From Not to Hot — has never felt better about herself.

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“I think she’s more into it now because she can wear blue jeans and she can wear all the clothes and stuff like that,” she told Us. “And before she couldn’t do that.”

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When Cardwell — who lives states away from her Georgia-based family in Alabama with husband Michael Cardwell and their daughters, Kaitlyn, 4, and Kylee, 14 months — caught up with Us last fall, she said that she had already seen a major change in Mama June’s physical appearance. Though they rarely spend time together these days, the reality TV matriarch visited Anna last October to be there when her granddaughter Kaitlyn’s extra thumb was surgically removed.

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“Whenever I saw her, my husband and I kind of said that she didn’t look that good when she had that extra skin on her,” Anna shared with Us. “And I told her, I said, ‘Me and Michael said you look like you were on meth.’ … Because all that extra skin hanged down and made her face look weird. She had all that extra skin and it didn’t look good. It made her look like she was on meth. And I haven’t seen her since then, so I don’t know what she looks like now.”

Despite Mama June’s jarring transformation, Anna insisted that her mother — who weighed 195 pounds at the time, following a gastric sleeve procedure — does not use meth. “I know my mama don’t do all that stuff,” the former TLC star told Us. “I know she don’t do that, I know for a fact she don’t do that stuff.”

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Though Mama June has yet to step out to reveal her new body, Anna told Us that the How to Honey Boo Boo author’s self-esteem has soared since slimming down. “I think it made her more confident with herself,” she said.

Mama June: From Not to Hot will premiere on February 24 at 10 p.m. ET on WE tv.

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