What with the baby and the other two kids, comfort eating took its toll. In a matter of months, my weight went up from 210lb to 280lb.In fact, it got so bad that I could hardly look after myself, let alone the kids. Simple things like putting my shoes on were a major operation. Then my GP said my weight was beginning to put a strain on my heart. If I didn't lose weight soon, I'd become seriously ill. What could be done? If I wanted to see my kids grow up, I had to make changes to my life.

First of all I had to change my diet.

The whole family were big eaters, so it was difficult to cut down. Especially on the comfort foods which had crept in. So to help my weight loss, I gradually introduced more fruit and vegetables and cut down on the 12 ounce steaks for breakfast!

Second change was to get much more exercise.

With three kids, it's hard, not to say very tiring, to do much straight forward exercise. But I started to walk more. And instead of getting my husband, bless him, to carry everything up and down stairs, to and from the flat, I started doing it myself. At first, it was a massive struggle, carrying goods or carry cot up those stairs and many a time my husband had to rescue me when I was only half way up. But you know how it is when something as important as your health is involved, you just have to grit your teeth and keep trying. I say it was a struggle at first. Actually, the struggle lasted for a long time!

The next change was to the way in which I thought about myself.

When you've just given birth to your third child, you tend to let everyone else do a lot of the work for you. "Can I help you out, darling. You sit down and take a rest." Sounds lovely, and it is. But it isn't really helpful in the weight loss stakes. Where I thought of myself as being rather frail and needing pampering at first, I slowly got to thinking, 'I'm too fat and if I don't get on and do things for myself, my life is going to be miserable.' Not only that, but all the family would have miserable lives. I began to change the way I thought about my life and how I was living.

Finally, I recruited my husband!

Actually, he didn't need much recruiting for this change! The last thing on your mind when you leave hospital after having a baby is sex. Enough of that already! But one of the best exercises for losing weight, and one of the most enjoyable(!), is having sex. So after a month or so of the new weight loss routine, sex was on the agenda again.

Now, of course, to have such a large weight loss in such a short time, all the changes above were not enough in themselves. They were all necessary, but they definitely weren't sufficient! Something else was needed. But I knew of nothing to help me. As luck would have it, a very good friend of mine recommended something that, quite frankly, I had no idea about. Can you imagine how glad I am that she did?

I passed my target and got down to 126lb in only 5 months. No doubt you can guess how great I feel today!