Telford mother stops sweets and loses whopping 14 stone

Aimee Hints, 23, of Madeley, Telford, wore a size 24 after eating the chocolate, along with portions of lasagne big enough to feed eight grown men.

She lost 14 stone after she was hospitalised twice for breathing problems – swapping her sugary snacks for fruit and eating healthy, low-fat meals.

Doctors feared Miss Hints, who is now a size 10, was too fat for an epidural when she was pregnant with her second child. Her mid-section was so thick that the needle was not long enough to reach her spine.

The 23-year-old, who is from Bishop's Castle, said: "I was literally eating myself into an early grave – I didn't think I would live to see 25, let alone 30.

"Every night before bed I would knock on our wooden headboard. I'd repeat 'please let me wake up' over and over in my mind.

"I was heartbroken thinking I might leave my daughters without a mother."

At her biggest she was too embarrassed to leave her house for weeks at a time and her mother had to coax her just to take a walk around the block.

She said: "Looking back I'm astonished by how much food I consumed.

"I was eating an entire lasagne for tea, sometimes followed by a bedtime snack of a large kebab and chips from the shop below our flat.

"Snickers were my vice. I couldn't get enough. I stopped seeing my friends. I wasn't the mum or wife I wanted to be."

Six months after she met partner Ben Wright, 25, she fell pregnant with daughter Chloe, now three.

She said: "I used the pregnancy as an excuse to eat. I had days where I constantly ate. By the end of the pregnancy my portion sizes had trebled.

"In addition to the food I drank loads of Lucozade, as well as coffee and tea with plenty of sugar.

"By the end of the pregnancy I was nine stone heavier than when I met Ben. I was officially morbidly obese."

The former Bishop's Castle Community College pupil told herself she would exercise after the baby came but it never happened.

Instead she lived in her maternity clothes for more than two years before falling pregnant a second time.

Six months after the birth of her second daughter, now two, she was diagnosed with Graves' Disease – a thyroid problem that contributed to her exhaustion.

Around the same time Aimee realised she needed to change her lifestyle to give her girls the childhood they deserved.

She said: "I was finished being ill and embarrassed.

"I'd recently broken two chairs – both at family parties – just by sitting on them."

She added: "I tried to laugh it off but it was humiliating. I was so unhealthy I found it difficult to breathe.

"I had terrible pain in my legs and bad chest pain.

"I was taken to A&E twice with what I now know were panic attacks. One day I woke up and knew my life was about to change."

The young mother started doing the Body By Vi programme, replacing food with low-calorie shakes. She managed to slim to 21 stone before faltering during Christmas 2013.

She said: "Suddenly I had so much more energy. I was on my feet playing with the girls and tidying the house instead of lying around all day.

"Once I lost eight stone I started clothes shopping again. I went into H&M and fit a size 14/16 – I couldn't believe it.

Now 11 stone 11lb and a size 10, she has lost 14 stone – the weight of a whole other obese adult.

She added: "My ultimate goal is to get under 11 stone. It's just around the corner."