A hardworking mother who once ate 6,000 calories a day has revealed how she dropped five dress sizes without using fat jabs – and now has a waist smaller than her thigh used to be.
Vicky Edwards, 43, a mother-of-two from Darlington, County Durham, began to comfort eat while working as a nurse during the pandemic, surrounded by people dying of Covid.
She said: ‘I just lost that thirst for life – I just wanted to get up, exist, make sure we all stayed alive and then went home again.
‘And then once Covid started settling down a little bit, I thought, “I’m just getting fatter now, I might as well just keep eating”.’
Standing at just 5’2, when Ms Edwards was at her heaviest weight of 12st 13lbs in 2021, her BMI placed her firmly in the obese category.
At the time, she was easily polishing off up to 6,000 calories a day, starting off with a cooked breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast, with mid-morning snacks of fruit, chocolate and cereal bars.
Lunchtime was a sandwich, crisps and a chocolate bar for lunch, then spaghetti bolognese for dinner, plus a hot chocolate and biscuits before bed.
‘People started commenting on how big I’d got – and that’s when I realised that it’s not what I wanted,’ she said.
Vicky Edwards, a mother of two from Darlington, County Durham, began to comfort eat while working as a nurse during the pandemic
Ms Edwards shed five dress sizes without fat jabs, shrinking her waist to smaller than her thigh used to be
She added that she felt she was not being a ‘good example for patients’ by being at an obese weight.
‘You wouldn’t want a dentist with bad teeth, or you wouldn’t want a police officer who breaks the law.
‘So it’s the same with nurses – you should be practising what you preach and, at that point, I just wasn’t doing that,’ she said.
Her weight took a toll on her mental health – she said she would wake up every day, telling herself she was ‘fat and ugly’, and would feel self-conscious and uncomfortable in her own skin.
In October 2021, she joined Slimming World and focused on eating more whole foods.
She swapped her morning bacon for Weetabix with milk and fruit for breakfast, snacking on pickled onions and carrot sticks.
For lunch, she now prepares one meal for the week, such as spaghetti bolognese, bulking it out with vegetables.
Her evening meal consists of low-fat burgers or meatballs, followed by a low-calorie hot chocolate or yoghurt.
The former nurse said that she felt she was not being a ‘good example for patients’ by being at an obese weight
Vicky now weighs 8st 2lbs and wants to maintain her fat loss while being able to lift weights
In the first week of her diet, she lost 10 and a half pounds, and after following the plan for 18 months and joining the gym in spring 2022, she reached 10 stone.
She now weighs 8st 2lbs and wants to maintain her fat loss while being able to lift weights.
Now a member of the England kettlebell team, she can lift her body weight above her head and says she feels stronger, more confident and happier in her own skin.
‘It’s like having imposter syndrome – I keep going out and buying the wrong sizes,’ she said.
‘I couldn’t really get my head around how I’d fit into a size eight when I was a size 18 for all those years.
‘It wasn’t until I took my measurements and realised my waist is now smaller than what my thigh used to be when I first started.’
As part of her kettlebell training, which is an endurance-based weight lifting sport, she works out for 90 minutes, three times a week.
Despite losing 4st 11lbs, in total and now having a healthy BMI of 20.9, she is still getting used to her new body.
Now a member of the England kettlebell team, she can lift her body weight above her head and says she feels stronger, more confident and happier in her own skin
Looking ahead, she said she does not want her weight to ever ‘creep back up’ to over nine stone.
‘I’ve worked really hard at my training so that I haven’t got lots of loose skin, and now I want to just keep challenging myself with my fitness,’ she explained.
‘I think I’d tell other people that it’s not a quick fix – I think anything that you do to lose weight, whether you choose calorie counting, injections, or Slimming World, it’s about consistency.
‘It’s what you do for the next six months that’s going to start carving you into a new version of yourself.’