MEN MediaTwo breakfasts, two family bags of chocolate and five litres of Coca Cola: one mum’s lifestyle was life-threatening.
Kelly McCracken, 42, from west Hull, East Yorkshire, was ‘addicted to food’. However, in March last year, her diet saw her hospitalised for diabetes and high blood pressure. Doctors told her she wouldn’t see 2020.
In less than 10 months, Kelly has turned it around, shedding six stone and now feeling like ‘a new person’.
MEN MediaBefore shedding the weight, Kelly struggled to carry out basic daily activities, saying she ‘didn’t have a life’.
Kelly said:
It was just the lifestyle I had. I was addicted to food. I was eating cakes and takeaways. Food was my life. I would eat two breakfasts and then go out for lunch. I’d eat two family sized bags of chocolate while I waited to pick my kids up from school and drank five litres of Coke a day.
Then in the evening I’d tell my partner that I’d hadn’t had tea, even though I had, and order two pizzas from the takeaway. I didn’t have a life. My partner was like my carer. I couldn’t dress myself and I couldn’t walk anywhere.
However, soon her lifestyle choices took their toll. In March 2019, she weighed 20st 2lb and doctors told her she had to do something to address her diabetes and high blood pressure.
MEN MediaKelly explained:
I’d been poorly all week. I’d been losing my eyesight and couldn’t do the school run. On the Friday, I went to bed feeling really ill but didn’t tell anyone and then early the next morning I was rushed to hospital in an ambulance. They told me I needed to turn my life around or I wouldn’t see the end of 2019.
From that moment, things changed. Later on the week after getting out of hospital, she went straight back to Weight Watchers and told her instructor: ‘I will do it this time.’
As well as chucking out all the junk food, from sweets and crisps to takeaways, she also followed the Weight Watchers blue plan. After making the three stone milestone, her partner got her a sausage dog, Frank, that she now walks twice a day.
MEN MediaAfter religiously following the Weight Watchers programme, Kelly now weighs just 13st 10lb – only four pounds away from her target weight. Her diabetes has also improved as well as a more stable blood pressure.
Kelly added:
Gradually I started to be able to walk more and do more things. I look after my mum and my brother and I can do so much more for my kids now. I’ve just signed up to the gym and I never thought I’d be able to do that. I want to learn how to run.
But its just small things like being able to have a bath and dress myself and I have so much more of a social life. It’s amazing, I feel like a new person. Every time I look in the mirror I don’t recognise myself.
While the transformation required a lot of hard work, Kelly offered a message of support to others trying to lose weight: ‘Take it one day at a time. All the small steps add up and you will get there in the end.’
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.