Life transformed by shedding stones
A WOMAN who used to spend nearly every day of the week in bed unable to get up has transformed her life by shedding a third of her body weight.
Liz Murphy, from Tumble in Carmarthenshire, said the weight piled on after she got married while still a teenager and started working in her new husband’s chippy.
Having never learned to cook, she found herself deep frying everything and before long she had tipped 18 stone on the scales.
With two young children, Liz was desperately unhappy. She knew something had to change, especially as her health deteriorated so much, she spent seven days a week in bed with migraines and lacking energy.
She couldn’t even bring herself to get out of the car when she dropped her two daughters off to school.
“I was trapped,” said Liz, who now works as a fulltime slimming consultant.
“Not just trapped with poor health but in my marriage too. I felt there was no way out, I was alone with my children.”
That was several years ago and marked her first attempt at getting to a healthy weight. In 2016 Liz went through a divorce and for a while had to find somewhere else to live with two young children in tow.
She successfully managed to lose nine stone by attending her local Slimming World group and just eating better. Her first challenge was to learn how to cook and not rely on the fryer.
“I got married at 17,” she said. “So I just never learned how to cook. The only thing I could make was a fruit salad, which had no cooking involved at all.”
At the time she would have severe migraines which rendered her bed bound but she never linked it to her weight.
“I couldn’t walk anywhere because everything ached,” she added.
“But I wanted to be a healthy mum to my two daughters, who were younger then, and I wanted to know I was going to be around a bit longer as they grew up.”
Slowly but surely, with the support of her group at Slimming World, Liz lost the weight and even signed up to Couch to 5K and started running.
“That was just incredible,” she said.
“If anyone had told me I would have been running, I would have laughed at them.”
As the weight came off, she regained her confidence and started feeling good about herself. She even started working for Slimming World full time.
An old friend from school got in touch and remarked how good she looked and before long, they were a couple and on Christmas Eve 2019, they got engaged.
But spending more and more time in the car as a Slimming World consultant, she found herself living off meal deals from petrol garages and old habits crept back in. Then, at the start of 2020, her mum died suddenly and before she knew it, she’d put all the weight back on.
“When my mum died, that was when I struggled,” she said. “Food was my emotional crutch.”
“I was 39, with two young children and I just knew I had to change something,” she said.
Although the wedding has been postponed due to Covid, Liz committed to a new healthy lifestyle all over again.
“At the start of lockdown, I thought to myself I can come out of this nine stone heavier or I can lose weight,” Liz said.
Liz is now at a much healthier weight of 13 stone but still has a few more pounds to shift, she said. But the Slimming World development manager is happier and healthier than she has ever been.
“Looking back at pictures of myself when I was at my heaviest, I feel sorry for myself – I wish I could give myself a hug,” she added.
TWO men have been jailed for their parts in a knife-point “gang-type” raid on a house.
Roland Auguste Irving Ardizzone and Charlie Sebastian Moxon were two of three masked intruders who forced their way into their victim’s home and threatened and beat him before stealing £700 in cash.
Ardizzone went on to attack a witness to the assault, while Moxon, after being released on bail, subsequently burgled a shop but was found after police followed a trail of stolen chocolate bars he dropped on his intoxicated way home.
Swansea Crown Court heard that in May last year Ardizzone, Moxon, who also goes by the name Charlie Lamb, and a third person burst into the house in Felin Ban in Cardigan.
Connor Evans, prosecuting, said the trio were wearing masks, and Moxon was brandishing a flick knife.
The court heard the victim had the knife held against his back and was “marched” into the kitchen of the property where he was repeatedly struck to the head with the butt of an air pistol which was lying on the table.
Mr Connor said Ardizzone shouted “Give me all your s*** and money” and “We’ll stab you if you don’t give us your s***” to the victim.
The victim handed over £700 in cash from a cupboard and was threatened that he would be killed if he reported the incident to the police.
The raiders fled the
property but one of them left his mobile phone behind, and when the victim retrieved it he found Ardizzone’s Facebook page was open on the device.
The court heard there were a number of other people in the property at the time, namely the victim’s partner and children, and a friend of his.
The friend encountered
Ardizzone again some two days later outside a chemists shop.
The court heard that when he challenged Ardizzone about what he had done and accused him of being “out of order”, he was punched in the face and called a “grass”.
Both Ardizzone and Moxon were arrested later that same day and subsequently released.
The court heard Moxon came to the attention of police again in August following a burglary at the Riverside Health Centre shop in Newcastle Emlyn.
That incident had seen an intruder smash the front door of the premises in the dead of night and steal the till and a quantity of stock from within.
However, police were able to follow a trail of dropped chocolate bars from the shop to the house where Moxon was staying at the time – the defendant was found passed out on a mattress in the property surrounded by stolen confectionery.
The court heard that the total loss to the shop in terms of damage, the stolen cash and the lost stock amounted to more than £5,100.
Ardizzone, of The Beeches, Llandysul, had previously pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding, theft, and assault by beating – the attack on the first victim’s friend – when he appeared in the dock for sentencing.
Moxon, of Parc y Pratt, Cardigan, had previously pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding, theft, burglary, and shoplifting when he appeared alongside his co-defendant.
James Hartson, for Ardizzone, said it was hard to reconcile the person described by people who knew the defendant, a softly-spoken tree surgeon who never shows signs of aggression, with the person who carried out the raid on the house.
Dyfed Thomas, for Moxon, accepted the incident in Cardigan had been an “unpleasant” one committed, as it was, with a weapon and in the presence of children.
He said the defendant had family in the Telford and Shrewsbury areas and, upon release from the inevitable custodial sentence he was facing, he wished to move there.
Judge Huw Rees said the pair had engaged in “a dreadful piece of gangtype behaviour” when they forced their way into their victim’s home.
He told them they were fortunate the prosecution had not pursued alternative charges such as aggravated burglary or they would be starting much longer sentences.
Ardizzone was sentenced to a total of two years and seven months in prison, and Moxon to a total of two years and nine months.
Both defendants will serve up to half those periods in custody before being released on licence to serve the remainder in the community.