‘I was addicted to chocolate’

Mum-of-three Alli Smith reached her heaviest weight of 125kg after three difficult pregnancies caused her to balloon to a size 20.

“I just got to a point where I’d had three babies in three years, and I wasn’t looking at myself in the mirror,” Alli tells Woman’s Day from her home in Wagga Wagga, NSW.

“I wasn’t happy with myself, and I wasn’t living life to the fullest. I didn’t want to go to events because I didn’t have anything that would fit me.

“I tried every diet under the sun and was spending all this money on all these programs to just fail every time.”

Snacking on nearly two blocks of chocolate a night, the 27-year-old disability support worker chomped on doughnuts, chips and biscuits throughout the day. “I was addicted to chocolate,” she confesses. “I think I was so addicted to it mainly for the taste. Most of the time I was restricting myself with diets.

“I told myself I wasn’t allowed that because it’s a ‘bad’ food. When I failed at a diet or was about to start a diet, I would binge and eat as much as possible.”

Desperate to change her ways, Alli saw her doctor, who recommended she undergo gastric sleeve surgery to prevent health complications in the future due to her size. She soon kicked her nightly chocolate habit and has since dropped 35kg in just seven months, swapping her sugar-heavy diet for fresh fruits and salads.

Alli also has more energy to play with her children with Henry, four, Kate, two, and George, one.

“I’m way more energetic, I run around with my kids and they’re enjoying it,” says Alli, who feels more confident than ever in her new 90kg frame, recently wearing shorts outside the house for the first time in six years. “My son said to me, ‘Mum, you look so pretty.’

“Now I wear what I want, not just what fits. I’ve finally succeeded in losing weight and am on the road to where I want to be.”