A new mum who peaked the scales at 21st lost seven stone after ditching her £800-a-month fast-food diet when doctors warned she might not live to see her daughter grow up.
Lillie Monro, 24, always struggled with her weight and would often have a takeaway burger for breakfast, as well as fast food for lunch and dinner.
Now, she’s swapped the burgers for salads, and as well as seeing her weight plummet, her finances also look healthier.
At her heaviest, her poor diet saw her reach 21st just before daughter Mila, two, was born, and a doctor warned the new mum she might not see her baby grow up.
Weighing 19st 1lb, and with her newborn baby in her arms, she pledged to change, and shrank 7st in a year, going from a size 22-24 to a 10-12.
She now weighs a healthy 12st.
The mum no longer spends £150-200 a week on fast food, meaning her food bills have halved, and she can climb the stairs without getting out of breath.
Lillie, an MOT, service and repairs adviser from Halstead, Essex said: “I literally lost a whole person worth of weight. My GP told me I wouldn’t see my daughter grow up so I knew I had to make rapid changes.
“I don’t think I’d have been able to do it if she hadn’t said that and I didn’t have Mila.
“I really enjoy just playing with her now: I wasn’t able to do that before.
“I didn’t do any exercise, just Slimming World. I actually really enjoyed it. I could still eat really big portions.
“I just changed the amounts of different foods so I was eating more of the right things and less of others, and cooked from scratch.
“At first I thought of it as a diet, but actually it’s a lifestyle change and that’s why it’s still working.”
As a 17st teen, Lillie said she didn’t like to go shopping with her friends, and first went to Slimming World aged 12 or 13.
She tried other diets too, but always found she put the weight back on afterwards, she said.
Lillie weighed 21st just before little Mila, now two, was born in February 2019, and 19st 1 shortly after.
The new mum was so uncomfortable about her weight she wouldn’t go out to the shops, or with her friends, and wouldn’t eat meals out, she said.
She went to her GP and was given medication for depression and anxiety, when Mila was three months old, in May 2019.
The female doctor told the mum her weight put her at risk of diabetes, heart failure, and other health risks, and she might not see her baby grow up, she said.
New-mum Lillie had feared losing little Mila when she was taken into neonatal intensive care with suspected sepsis just hours after being born, she said.
“You don’t expect your doctor to tell you you’re going to pop your clogs, but I’m so glad she did,” said Lillie.
“That was my wake-up call.https://get-latest.convrse.media/?
“When she said it, it reminded me of that fear of loss when Mila was in intensive care: it was so awful, really dreadful.
“I went home from the GP and cried my eyes out then decided to make changes.”