A former X Factor hopeful and her best pal who forked out £20,000 on weight loss surgery have lost more than 10st between them.
Lekenah Eccles, who was a size 22 when she auditioned for the talent show alongside Little Mix's Leigh-Anne Pinnock, says her lack of confidence sabotaged her chances and she was dropped after round one.
Now 31, part time blogger and mum Lekenah lives in High Wycombe with her hub Joshua and their kids, Aieko, four, and Zenzae, 18 months.
Weighing 16st 3lbs, Lekenah opted to pay £10,500 for gastric bypass surgery in January of this year.
Watching her best mate go through the procedure and also weighing around 16st, pal Kylie Churchley, 33, decided to spend £10,000 on a gastric sleeve the following month.
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Lekenah said: "Having Kylie to go through the process with me was so helpful. It was good to have someone to talk to about the struggles of over eating."
The blogger says she had a "binge-eating disorder" before the operation, but after going under the knife, she has a more positive mindset.
"Now when I look in the mirror I feel grateful," she said.
"When I lost weight on my own I wasn’t grateful. I continued to pick at my body and my flaws."
She recalled going to Zumba classes and Weight Watchers meetings in her 20s - but any weight she lost was soon piled back on.
Now, she's learning to love her body, and even donned a bikini on holiday in Antigua this year, which she said felt "amazing."
"I’ve also started doing commercial modelling and just doing things I thought I could never do because of my body," she said.
Looking back on her painful X Factor rejection, Lekenah said it was difficult watching pal Leigh-Anne go on to win the show with Little Mix, while she only made it past the first round.
"At the time, I felt like no one wanted me because I was the fat girl," she said.
"And when Leigh-Anne got through and I didn’t, while I was pleased for her, I was gutted, as I was seeing my best friend living my dream."
Lekenah says her battle with her weight started when she was a child growing up in a Thai family, explaining that people showed love through feeding.
She said: "I was eight when I first had puppy fat and just kept getting bigger.
"I didn’t realise it then, but I had an eating disorder. My relationship with food just wasn’t great."
She added she also began to resent exercise when her mum encouraged her to work out.
"Knowing I was coming home from school for a lovely dinner, but that my mum would restrict me to something like one Milky Bar because of my weight, on the way back I’d buy a load of chocolate and binge on Galaxy bars and Snickers before I got there," she said.
Although she managed to lose weight after giving birth to her eldest daughter, she put it back on after her second was born.
She said: "I was in a very bad place mentally and had a binge eating disorder, where I would eat until I felt sick.
"It was like I had no other outlet for my feelings, so I would use food to my own detriment."
The stress of looking after two kids was also taking its toll, causing Lekenah to "lose control" of her eating.
As she approached the big 30, she decided something had to change - and looked into weight loss surgery.
On 12 January 2021, she went under the knife and had her stomach stapled in a gastric bypass operation.
Staying just one night in hospital, it took her just one week to feel back to normal.
Living on a liquid diet at first, she lost a stone in one month. From then on, she dropped a few pounds every week.
As well as her fantastic weight loss, Lenekah says the operation has helped her learn to listen to her body.
"I do think if you have an eating disorder, it could be even more triggered by having surgery like this, as you can obsess with being slim instead," she said.
"But I am happy, as I want more for myself than just what I look like now."
After seeing Lekenah so happy and healthy, Kylie decided to book in for a gastric sleeve operation just one month later.
The procedure is slightly different to the gastric bypass, as part of the stomach is removed to make it much smaller.
Now weighing 12st 12lbs, Kylie said: "When Lek told me at Christmas that she was having a gastric bypass, I started asking all about it.
"The recovery was what really worried me, but she was fine really quickly. I could see how well she was, as we were speaking on FaceTime every day."
With the country in lockdown at the time, Kylie couldn't go to work as a hairdresser, meaning the timing was "perfect" for her to have an operation and recover in plenty of time.
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"I am very impulsive, so I decided to go for it and booked in on February 11," she said.
"We compared notes all the time and I was always a stone behind her weight loss.
"I am a size 12 and I feel amazing now. My mindset is really good."
Kylie, who was bullied at school about her weight, was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome when she got older. The condition can cause weight gain.
In attempts to lose weight, Kylie admits she was a "textbook yo-yo dieter."
She said: "I’ve done Slimming World, Weight Watchers, LighterLife, the Cambridge diet. I’ve just spent lots of money pointlessly on diets that were never going to work for me."
But since going under the knife, Kylie's mindset has improved and brought her even closer to her best friend.
"I can't wait to go on a girls' holiday and to dress up and feel sexy and wear things I wouldn’t usually wear like a body con dress," she said.
"Friends who see me now go, ‘Wow! Lockdown has treated you well.' And it really has!"
