After having my son in May 2005 my weight had gone up to over 15stone. I thought it would have been easy to lose but I was proved wrong.

After a few months I had finally lost a stone but I was still unhappy about the way I looked. I didn’t like going clothes shopping because I was a size 18-20 and I could never find anything nice to wear for my age.

After getting photographs developed from a wedding in April 06 I decided something had to be done about my weight. The photographs were terrible – you could see my big jelly belly through my clothes even though I had bought pull in pants.

One day I was in my local shop and I noticed a poster for Unislim, but I was too nervous to even think about going. I kept imagining I would be the only overweight person in the room and people would look and laugh at me. After another few weeks of trying to diet I decided to bite the bullet and give Unislim a go.

I went along to my first class and met Annemarie, the class leader. She was so welcoming and I started to feel at ease. She didn’t judge me or make me feel uncomfortable about being overweight. Over the next few weeks the weight began coming off and I was noticing a difference in my clothes. The plan was really easy to get used to and I was enjoying the food, whereas before I just stuffed the food into my mouth without really savouring it. I cut out all fried foods and began eating more fruit and vegetables and started to enjoy cooking using the recipes in the booklets. I joined the gym which was very hard work, but I stuck at it and it paid off! I managed to lose two stone in a matter of months. My dress size had gone down and my confidence had gone up.

At the moment I am a healthy size 12 and I’m the happiest I’ve been in a long time. When I started trying to lose weight I was doing it to satisfy other people because they wanted me to lose weight, but when I joined Unislim I realised I had to do it for me.