Slimmed down Kirsty Fowler is bouncing with joy – after losing half her bodyweight in just six months.
The mum-of-three had ballooned to an unhealthy 17 stone through years of binging on her favourite cakes, biscuits and crisps.
She hit rock bottom when she hired a bouncy castle for her son’s birthday – and then refusing to go on it because she feared bursting it.
Self-conscious Kirsty, 33, waited until the other parents and children had gone home before daring to climb on the inflatable.
She then decided to knuckle down to a low calorie diet of weight-loss shakes, cereal bars and soup.
She has shed seven stone in half a year, dropping size 24 to a trim size ten – and gets on a bouncy castle with no worries.
Kirsty, who now tips the scales at nine and a half stones, said: “One of my sons turned to me and said, ‘mummy, why are you so fat?’ I was just stunned.
“Then we hired a bouncy castle for my son’s birthday party and I was genuinely scared I was going to pop it.
“I waited until everyone had gone home because I didn’t want them to see the ‘beached whale’ on it.
“I was so unhappy realised I had to do something about it.
“Now I’m just trying to get used to my new figure. I look at my reflection in a window and ask myself if it really is me.”
Kirsty said she had also put the spark back into her marriage to electrician Greg, 33, since slimming down.
She added: “He keeps chasing after me which he didn’t do before and what he has been doing recently is keep picking me up.
“There’s no way he would have been able to do that before.
“He also says he’s seen my confidence shoot back up.”
Kirsty put on weight as a teenager and her brittle self-esteem plummeted when she lost her sister to breast cancer and then suffered the heartbreak of a stillborn baby.
By the time she hired a bouncy castle for son Callum’s seventh birthday party in February this year she was a hefty 17 stone.
Friends urged her to get on the inflatable with her youngsters in the back garden of her home in Aylesbury, Bucks. but embarrassed Kirsty pretended she was too busy.
She followed the Cambridge Weight Plan diet and took up regular exercise.
She also included Callum and her other children Abigail, nine, and Lewis, two, in her new healthy eating regime.
Kirsty says she has never felt better than she does now – and is even considering becoming a weight-loss consultant.
