A self-described "hermit" who admitted that she ate "non-stop" for over two years detailed how she went from a size 32 all the way down to a size 14, with the help of a new diet accomplished alongside her mother. Stephanie went from lying around and gorging to exercise and healthy eating, shedding 12 stone in the process.
24-year-old Stephanie Sykes, who is an administrative assistant, regularly ate around 5,000 calories a day for several months - over twice the daily recommended calorie intake - after a family tragedy, but was convinced by her mum Karen to enrol in a slimming class which ended up changing her life.
"I was always big. My mum was large and so was my dad, and all I’d really known myself as was a size 22," explained Stephanie, but her relationship with food became toxic on Father's Day in 2015, when her father passed away suddenly of an aortic aneurysm, where a blood vessel bulges, leading to ruptures and internal bleeding.
"I was on holiday in Spain with my ex and had sent Dad a message that morning, thanking him for how much he had done for me over the years and called him the best dad ever. But that night, around 10pm, I got the biggest shock when my mum called saying he’d died. It was such a shock and I felt broken."
Stephanie fell into a deep depression, eating all of the time, and staying home from work. She barely left the house she shared with her ex-partner, and Stephanie says she became a hermit. "I was bored and unhappy and didn’t care what I looked like any more," she explained.
"Life didn’t really feel worth living to me, so I thought, ‘Who cares that I’m so big?’ My boyfriend didn’t seem to mind that I was letting myself get so large, so I kept eating and eating, only really going from my bed, to the kitchen to the sofa and the bathroom, apart from once a week, when I went to Mum’s house, five minutes away, where I’d just lie on the sofa, too."
But then, Stephanie's mum decided to step in to help her daughter, signing up to a slimming class, and when Stephanie saw her mother's weight loss, she decided to join in too, and the results are incredible. She went from a size 32 to a size 14, and is now unrecognisable, saying she sometimes doesn't recognise herself in the mirror.
"I feel like a completely different person," she said.
"When I was a size 32, I could only get my clothes from one place online and I’d only leave the house to go to my mum’s, where I’d also lie on the sofa. Now, when I look in the mirror, I can’t believe it’s me... I can actually buy clothes in high street shops now and when I look in the mirror, I can’t believe it’s me."
Stephanie's come a long way, but there's a lot more work that has to be done. With a fair bit of excess skin, Stephanie is currently trying to raise funds for a tummy tuck, but having broken up with her ex, she's looking to date again. "It’s the one last thing left in my massive change," she said, and she deserves all the plaudits she gets for her hard work in the face of tragedy.
