A young mum who used to spend up to £5,400 on takeaways a year said she was inspired to change her life after failing to fit in a ride at Blackpool Pleasure Beach.
Melanie now weighs just over nine stone and has dropped a staggering nine dress sizes and now confidently dons slinky size 10 dresses and feels 'amazing', both mentally and physically. The singer is now keen to share her story in a bid to encourage others struggling with their weight and to break the stigma around weight loss surgery as being 'the easy way out'.
Melanie said when her binge eating was at its worst, she'd scoff four breakfast rolls stuffed with bacon, sausage and hash browns before 10:15am. She'd also gulp down six cans of diet coke and spend at least £10-15 on takeaways a day. "It was just a constant reminder from kids every day that I was big. I've forgiven and removed any resentment from anything towards all this, we were just kids. The name-calling was really difficult, which then just made me just go into myself and not really want to share who I was. It just completely changed who I was and became.
"Chairs always used to break all the time. I couldn't fit in any plastic or patio chairs, they'd always snap. These are physical effects but I think for myself it was more a mental effect it had on me, it was very overwhelming. Beforehand, she did an in-depth self-development course on nutrition and mental health to get her in the strongest mindset possible before such a life-changing procedure. She'd also lost some weight and was just over 19 stone.