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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Lifestyle
Matthew Barbour

Obese mum loses nearly seven stone after realising gran, 85, was fitter than her

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.

She's now much happier at size 10 - a whopping 14 sizes smaller than at her heaviest (Laura Jones)

“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.

Grandma Lily managed to walk quicker than her 34-year-old granddaughter (Laura Jones)

“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.”

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