An obese mum lost more than six stone after realising her 85-year-old gran was fitter than her.
Laura Jones, 37, gorged on a kilo of chocolate a day, eating so much her teeth hurt.
But she was shamed into shaping up after failing to keep up with her gran Lily on the school run.
And mum-of-three Laura has since gone from a size 24 to a 10 – now weighing a healthy 12 stone, down from 18stone 10lb.
She said: “One day my gran came on the school run with me and I was so unfit I had to stop several times to catch my breath. She asked if I was OK.
“I stood there red-faced seeing her look of confusion and thought, ‘This is insane.’
“I was 34. A woman more than twice my age was making me look like an invalid.”
That day, back in September 2015, Laura vowed to lose weight. She began researching nutrition, then joined a friend who went out for a run.
“At first I couldn’t run more than 200 metres,” she recalled.
“Every day I went back out and tried again, running to one lamppost further each time.
“I was determined not to give up.”
Laura, from Shrewsbury, began to lose a pound or two a week and has stuck with her diet every since.
She has swapped her daily binge of Nutella on toast, giant sandwiches and greasy sausages and mash for avocado, chicken and salad and homemade cottage pie. Laura admits she had been hopelessly yo-yo dieting since she was a teenager.
She piled on the pounds with each of her pregnancies, and needed regular checks for gestational diabetes.
The extra weight also made running after nine-year-old Lilly, Daisy, five, and Poppy, four, even harder.
She said: “As soon as the kids went to bed I’d sit down on the sofa and open up the chocolate.
“I’d eat so much that my teeth used to hurt. I would feel sick and still finish a massive box of Maltesers.”
When she got married to her builder husband Andy, 48, in 2010, Laura burst in to tears when the dressmaker told her she needed a size 24.
And she was mortified when she could not take part in a charity skydive in her late 20s because of her weight.
But now she has not only braved a skydive to raise cash for Hope House Children’s Hospice in Oswestry, but has packed in her job as an accountant to train as a coach and nutritionist.
Laura’s gran Lily sadly died in 2016. But her streamline granddaughter reckons she would have been delighted with the new her.
She said: “Everyone says she’d be really proud of what I’ve done and how she was the catalyst for the new me.”
- Follow Laura on Instagram or read her blog at here .
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