When people decide to make changes in their lives, it is often down to one particular "wake up call" incident. An especially bad hangover might urge someone to cut down on drinking, for instance, or a persistent cough could be the trick to convincing someone to give up the cigarettes.
For Kat Pond, the decision to lose weight was all down to a bathtub.
During her younger years, Pond was not overweight by any means. In fact, she recalls being quite skinny. As she got older, though, she began to eat more. "I was slim through most of my teenage years," she said, "I’d been a fussy eater, but then I discovered food and really went for it!"
Gradually, she got bigger and bigger - but her body only took its biggest hit after she had kids.
"The weight really piled on when I had my children. Each time I got pregnant, I’d put on a couple of stones and then afterwards I’d lose most of the weight but keep about a stone. By the time I had my youngest daughter, who’s now three, I was the biggest I’d ever been because I had an extra stone from every pregnancy plus more. I’d basically had 20 years of absolute food abuse."
The diet she kept to was incredibly unhealthy, and even she wasn't surprised by how much weight she had put on. In a typical day, she said, she would have "six Weetabix with lots of sugar and about eight pieces of toast for breakfast", followed by "four chocolate pastries and wash them down with a big bottle of chocolate milk." During the day, she would get through "two litres of Coke and more chocolate or a family size bag of crisps."
"I’d eat in secret and hide the packaging so no-one would know - and we had takeaways probably two nights a week," she said.
Clearly, Pond had a problem, but the 41-year-old said the tipping point was when she got "stuck in the bath".
"I let the water out and then just couldn’t get out myself," she said. "I tried for ages but I was so heavy, I just couldn’t get up. The longer I sat there, the colder I got until finally my teenage son had to come and bring me a towel and try to help me out.
"It was awful, I was freezing and crying and he should never have had to see his mum like that. It was such a low point, I knew I had to do something."
At the time, Pond weighed 18 stone (114.4kg), and had been warned by her doctor that she was morbidly obese. At that weight, she was at serious risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and had a much higher chance of developing potentially fatal conditions such as heart disease.
After two years of hard work and dedication, however, she's managed to almost halve her weight to 9st 13lb (63kg) - and she looks like a completely different person.
By taking on a Slimming World diet, the mother-of-four has seen amazing results.
"I can still eat really big portions, it’s just about getting a nutritional balance," she explained. "You fill your plate with a third veg, so you cut your calories without cutting your portion size."
Once she was down to 13 stone using this dieting method, she took up running, too, which helped shift the pounds a lot faster. Now, she feels brand new, and she has no intentions of going back.
"I want to be a role model for my children and for them to see me feeling good about myself. I think my positivity radiates in the house. And I want to inspire and motivate other people because if I can do it, and I was a mess, then they can.
"It took me a year before I could even tell anyone what happened in the bath, but I’ve made my peace with it now and I hope I’m an example that no matter how bad things get you can come back from it. Now, just the sheer excitement of being able to jump out of the bath like a Jack-in-the-box is amazing."
After getting the wake-up call she needed, then, Pond is so much happier with herself. And, who knows, perhaps someone reading this is looking for their own wake-up call, in which case: this is it.
