A determined woman ditched the takeaways and lost five and a half stone in less than a year to make her recently deceased dad proud.
Dubliner Sandra Doyle said she was a “takeaway junkie” before she discovered the power of Slimming World.
The 48-year-old told the Irish Mirror: “I balloon up and down and something last year just clicked in my head and I was like, ‘That’s it, I’m done with this’.
“So I bit the bullet and went back to Slimming World. During lockdown I bought myself a weighing scales and weighed myself every Saturday at the same time.”
The proud mum of two added: “I then put my weight into the app, I started off at 15st 12lb, my height is only 5ft 4ins.
“I’m now 10st 3lb, I was a size 22 and now I’m in size 10 shorts.”
Sandra, who works as a box office manager, said she’s keeping the weight off in honour of her dad.
She explained: “He passed away nine weeks ago, he always said, ‘keep it going’, he was a fitness fanatic.
“I loved being able to tell my dad every week I was down this amount or that amount. He was so encouraging, he would be telling me he didn’t want me to have health problems or to end up with diabetes. I know he’d be proud of my weight loss.”
Being addicted to takeaways is now a thing of the past, but it’s taken Sandra some time to get to this point.
She said: “I wanted to be fabulous at 40 and I lost a load of weight.
“You know the usual, you start bingeing away on takeaways and then before you know it, you’re back up like Nelly the elephant.
“This time I made a promise to my dad that I was going to lose the weight.
“I could have had shares in the Chinese takeaway, I’d be ordering everything – spice bags and curries.
“I’d be in work and go have Burger King for lunch and then go home and have a takeaway.
“I would have been a takeaway junkie. It was the bad food choices, I personally didn’t realise when I started on this journey that your taste buds can change.
“You start getting an appreciation for food you should have been eating anyway. I now love butternut squash soup.”
Since losing weight, Sandra has become addicted to fun adrenaline fuelled activities.
She said: “I went ziplining, since, it was amazing.”
