Tears of joy filled the room of a Slimming World class when a mum-of-three achieved her 10st weight loss goal, going from a size 30 to a size 16 in just a year and a half. Sam Jones recalls how overwhelmed she was with emotion and gratitude for her supporters when she hit the double-figure mark on the scales.
The 36-year-old from Tylorstown in the Rhondda, Wales, started her Slimming World weight loss journey in 2021 when her daughters were just one and two, Wales Online reports. The mum had gone through two pregnancies within two years of each other and said she had 'piled' on the pounds during that time.
She had tried out the weight loss organisation before but said although she would lose weight she would eventually end up going back to her old ways. However, this time around she was determined to reach those double figures and after achieving them, she is never looking back.
Sam said: "You know when you achieve something you have wanted for such a long time – I had built up this tension in my body. When I saw those numbers I thought: 'Oh my God'. We cried happy tears – it was just amazing".
Before Sam turned her life around with her remarkable weight loss, she said her body was beginning to fail her. The mum was struggling to make it up the stairs and would be out of breath and sweating after doing just minor activities.
She also experienced pain in her hips and knees. She said: "I knew my life was starting to get a struggle and with two young babies I thought: 'I can't keep going down that road'.
"My fear was that I wasn't going to see my children grow up, see them achieve what they wanted, get married. I still suffer with the anxiety and depression but not as bad.
"I am in a totally different mindset. I can run up and down the stairs and I can run up and down the hill by my house, take my children to the park. Doing that before was difficult."
Sam is now able to be a better mother for her children and her improved fitness levels means she can care for them in ways that were often previously 'difficult'. Before her weight loss journey, her diet would consist of four pieces of white bread with butter for breakfast accompanied with a cup of tea with sugar in it.
Lunch would usually be a Greggs or chips and sausage from the fish shop and for dinner she would eat something like pizza and chips or would have a takeaway with crisps and chocolate between her meals. Now for breakfast, she usually prepares overnight oats or will make baked oats with fruit and natural yoghurt.
She's swapped her unhealthy lunches for a jacket potato and salad or a Slimming World ready meal and for dinner she likes to make curries from scratch. She tries to keep her Slimming World syns to track the amount of 'not-free' food you are allowed to eat which is between five and seven a day by avoiding snacks.
She explains: "My diet now consists of preparing food and I would never do that before. I make sure I have three good meals a day so I know I am full."
Sam's journey has been filled with emotion and she and her consultant were left in tears when she hit the 10st weight loss mark last week. The proud mother said the whole class who she says are like 'family' were crying with her as they knew how much it meant to her.
Another huge moment for Sam was when she could fit into sizes in what she described as 'normal shops'. The mum said she held off buying new clothes for as long as she could as she wanted to lose even more weight before buying a new size.
She said: "I walked into class one day and I said: 'I can shop in normal shops'. They all laughed. Normal shops to me are like New Look and River Island and Primark. Before I would only fit in clothes from Yours or Evans. Now I can go where I want to go."
Sam said a memorable moment for her was when she flew out to Cyprus last year on a family holiday and realised on the airplane how much of a life-changing weight loss she had already achieved. She recalls: "When I got on the plane I could not believe how much more comfortable I was.
"Not asking for an extension for my seatbelt. Being able to get my tray table down in front of me and not having panic attacks because of the weight that I was."
Sam has credited her remarkable transformation to Slimming World consultant Nicola Jones who runs a class in Porth Planza on Friday. The mum-of-three also does a bounce about fitness class twice a week with her pal which she says she could have never imagined doing before.
