Tears of joy after losing 10 stone
Super slimmer Julia Jones lost so much weight that her own daughter did not recognise her when she went to pick her up after a term away at university.
The 41-year-old, who has lost more than nine and a half stone, had not seen student Jasmine for nearly three months when she went to pick her up from Cannock Railway Station at Christmas. She said: "When she realised it was me, she burst into tears. It was a life-affirming moment."
The joyful scene was in complete contrast to a crushing moment nine months earlier when Julia was given a gift of flying lessons from her family to celebrate her 40th birthday.
"I was too fat to fit in the plane, it was so humiliating. Thank goodness I found out when I was trying to book a slot on line before I actually went to the airfield. It had been a dream of mine to fly – that was the point at which I resolved once and for all to lose weight."
It is the second time that the mother-of-two has lost a massive amount of weight – but this time it is staying off, she vowed.
Julia, of Brownhills Road, Norton Canes, was always large and can remember being teased over her size. She left school without taking her exams and her confidence at zero, which led to an unhappy marriage. She went on her first diet after leaving her husband and starting a new life, including enrolling at college at the age of 28 to take her O-levels and going on to take a university degree in business studies. She lost a staggering 11 and a half stone but slowly put it all back on after meeting her current partner John.
In February 2007 she enrolled on a nursing degree course at Wolverhampton University but had to abandon her studies after injuring her back on the wards at Walsall Manor Hospital.
She became miserable. "I felt embarrassed just walking around, I felt people were looking at me. I knew that once I could lose weight, other things would fall into place and the world would look different."
She has substituted her former diet of buttered toast, crisps, chocolate and takeaways with fruit, pasta, chicken and yoghurts, and spends three hours in the gym at Chase Leisure Centre three or four times a week.
Now she is starting her own slimming classes at Our Lady of Lourdes in Hednesford in April and Chasetown Methodist Church in May.
