7st lighter: I went from ‘giant lump’ to ‘yummy mummy’
Laura Rail, 41, has lost 7st - and dropped 7 dress sizes to feel amazing…
It was a double celebration – so we had two cakes. One for our 20th wedding anniversary and one for my 40th birthday.
Standing next to my husband, Mike, as we posed for pictures – me in a red dress with a plunging neckline – I thought I looked really good.
I love the colour red and the neckline showed off my only good assets – my boobs.
It was only afterwards, when I saw the pictures, that I realised I’d been kidding myself.
The pictures made me feel ashamed. Disgusted.
I looked like a giant lump. What must my friends have thought?
At 5ft 10in tall, I weighed 19st. I hated the way I looked. I cried. And cried. When I was younger I could eat anything I liked and never put on a pound. But then I was a semi-professional sprinter, captain of the school netball team, you name the sport, I did it.
But within a few years of leaving school and starting a family, my size-10 figure ballooned to a 20, then all the way up to a mammoth size 26.
Mike and I married in 1998, and a year later we had our daughter, Hannah. The weight piled on, as it does when you’re pregnant and then breastfeeding. Our son, Ben, was born three years later.
With two small children, there wasn’t a lot of time to exercise. And I carried on eating for two.
When Ben was two I suffered a terrible bout of mastitis – the doctors I saw told me to stop breastfeeding, but I explained I’d stopped when Ben was 12 months old!
I saw a total of seven specialists over the next four years, but nothing worked. Every morning I felt like my chest had been hit with a baseball bat – it knocked my confidence as well as affecting my marriage.
When I was 29, my GP finally suggested that I see a surgeon to get some breast tissue removed.
A scan at the Princess Anne Hospital in Southampton showed I had quite a few lumps and bumps, as well as two cysts. Fearing the worst, the surgeon told me I didn’t have cancer, but my breasts were infected – I’d need a bilateral mastectomy.
I had that operation followed by a reconstruction, but instead of feeling better I started to suffer intense abdominal pain. Further tests then showed I had endometriosis and I needed a full hysterectomy.
So, by the age of 33 I felt like my essence of being a woman had gone.
Not only could I never breastfeed any future babies, now I couldn’t have any more children.
I hit rock bottom and instead of dealing with my negative emotions, I ate.
I lived off refined carbs – four rounds of white toast with peanut butter and salad cream for breakfast, a whole packet of biscuits and endless crisps, a massive cheese and ham sandwich for lunch, then chips and pasta for dinner. We loved pasta in our house.
In October 2012, we had another piece of terrible luck. Mike broke his neck in a freak traffic accident, meaning I had
to go back to work in a cafe full-time and also be his carer.
Life couldn’t get any worse. My weight went up and up and I had to buy clothes online from plus-size shops. I basically sunk into a hole of self-loathing.
In 2014, I went on a city break to Cracow. The seat belt on the plane wouldn’t fit around me. I was too embarrassed to ask for a seat belt extension – instead I nearly cut myself in half with it.
As if the humiliation wasn’t enough, in spring 2018 I dislocated my knee getting out of my car.
My hospital discharge summary stated the cause of my injury as ‘ large habitus’. Asking a nurse what that meant, she whispered: ‘It’s your body mass, love’. My 19st frame was literally killing me.
In that moment I was so angry at myself – how had I let this happen? I wasn’t even 40.
That May we planned a party for my milestone birthday and our 20th wedding anniversary.
It was after that when I saw the horrible photos. I was still struggling on crutches, waiting for my knee op, when I started to hatch a plan.
While most women vow to lose weight Christmas, I couldn’t wait. I had surgery in the autumn and, once I was back on my feet, I found a local Cambridge Weight Plan consultant called Jo online. I told Mike I’d found the diet for me. He rolled his eyes – to be fair, he’d heard it all before.
So, while everyone else was overeating in the run-up to Christmas, I started my diet – meal-replacement shakes and bars, and one 200-calorie meal a day. By the end of Christmas, I’d lost 10lbs.
I knew, this time, in 2019, I could knock it out of the park!
Come New Year’s Day, I hit the ground running. By July I was at my goal weight of 12st 5lbs – but kept going, and by September I was down to 11st 10lbs and swanning around in a size 12!
I went on holiday and wore a bikini for the first time since our honeymoon 21 years ago.
My daughter, Hannah, is getting married next year, and I know I’ll be able to stand proudly next to her.
I’m now a consultant and love helping other people reach their goals.
If anything, my marriage is stronger than ever. And now I can wear my favourite colour and feel fabulous – Mike agrees – he says I’m his sexy lady in red!
‘I knew this time, I could knock it out of the park’