A woman who was severely bullied over her weight and even stabbed more than 60 times with a compass has shed an incredible 17 stone.
Clara Barrett was around 11 years old when a bully repeatedly poked her with an old compass in the shoulder, while taunting her: "I bet you're so fat you can't feel this."
She never reported the incident at Pingle Academy in Swadlincote, instead spending the rest of the day with blood dripping down her back that she covered up with a cardigan, Staffordshire Live reports.
The now 31-year-old said: "I was severely picked on at school. People used to pull my trousers down. One girl slapped me round the face every day for a year and I later started self-harming by cutting my wrists to make myself feel better.
"I was also stabbed in the back by a compass 62 times and spent the rest of the day with blood dripping down my back."
Even as an adult, she did not escape the bullying over her weight and was once walking down the road when a car sped by and someone in it hurled takeaway food at her. She was hit in the face and body by noodles and sauce.
She said: "If you are fat you are treated like animals. It was like I wasn't human to them."
But now, Clara has bounced back from her dreadful school days and to shed 17 stones, slimming down from a 34/36 dress size when she weighed 29 stones to comfortably fitting into a size-eight dress at 12.8 stones.
She said: "For a long time my age matched my weight, so when I was 11 I was 11 stones, but I eventually got heavier after the age of 15."
She says she "would eat 10 to 15 doughnuts a day, 300g chocolate bars in one sitting and by 2014 I was at my heaviest".
After the end of another relationship, Clara decided enough was enough and in 2019 she started on her weight loss journey and has never looked back.
Asked what she ate when she was at her heaviest, she said: "What was I not eating?"
As well as doughnuts and chocolate Clara said her biggest problem was portion control as her stretched stomach meant she was always hungry, eating huge amounts.
She said: "I didn't have set meals three times a day. I would just eat when I was hungry and I was hungry all the time."
Clara, who is currently unemployed, kick-started her weight loss journey by overhauling her diet and found Body by Ryan Fitness on Instagram.
The channel advised her to eat something every day that would be considered to make her put weight on, but stick to a calorie-controlled diet.
She said: "No food is bad for you in the right quantities."
Nowadays for breakfast she has cereal such as muesli or granola with soya protein milk or Marmite on wholemeal or seeded bread.
If she is snacking, she will eat a Go Ahead bar and for lunch, alongside tuna, courgettes, tomato, pepper and pasta. For tea after the gym - as she now regularly exercises - she will have a protein-filled chicken wrap.
Asked what she does now that she did not do when she was larger, she said: "I used to sit on the sofa all day and watch my husband play video games. But I got up off my a*** and I now walk everywhere."
Despite her success, her amazing weight has left her with excess loose skin, which she believes weighs around 25lbs.
She said: "I have good days when I get used to it because it is part of me, but on one bad day I tried to cut [the skin] off myself and got a scar.
"I was getting down about it."
She has now come up with a rough figure as to how much it would cost to remove her excess skin and has set up a GoFundMe donation page to raise £15,000 for the surgery.
She said: "I have done what I can do in the gym and my hobbies to tighten my excess skin, but I have so much of it that it's been to no avail.
"My weight-loss journey was never about size - it was about being happy. I wasn’t happy at the size I was. I know I'll never bad-mouth the girl I was, though, as she got me here.
She had the strength to start and I owe it to her to try and finish what she started but this bit I cannot do alone. I hope you can help however small."
If anyone would like to help they can donate by clicking here.
Don't miss the latest news from around Scotland and beyond - Sign up to our daily newsletter here.
