A mum who underwent a remarkable weight loss transformation has revealed the "biggest thing" that helped her lose five stone in the space of nine months. Lauren Voyce, 32, has been struggling with her weight since a young age but decided to take serious action after her mum was diagnosed with breast cancer and couldn't be treated properly because she was overweight.
Lauren's mum, Karen Martin, 65, was told her BMI was too high for the first line of treatment doctors wanted to give her following her "out of the blue" diagnosis during a routine doctor's appointment. Doctors were thankfully able to find a different form of chemotherapy to treat the cancer but it left Lauren concerned about her own health and determined to make some changes, the Manchester Evening News reports.
Speaking of her mum's shock diagnosis, she said: "It kind of spurred me on to do something about my own weight issue because I've got a little boy, and to think that if anything happened to me and I couldn't have the right treatment because my BMI was too high, I'd never forgive myself."
The mum-of-one credited Slimming World for her transformation, which she said works so well for her because she is "in control" and is not being told what to do by someone else. After joining the weight loss organisation in May last year, she successfully managed to lose five stone in the short space of nine months.
Lauren said: "The biggest thing with Slimming World is I'm in control of it. It's not someone else telling me what to do. I saw a dietician, I saw all kinds of health professionals when I was at school, and it was very much a prescriptive thing of 'this is what you must do, try this'.
"Well, that doesn't work for a lot of people and it certainly doesn't work for me. If your mind is in the right place then Slimming World definitely works. Once I started seeing the results and seeing how things were changing it spurred me on even more.
"I gave it everything because I had that drive and it obviously paid off. I'm really proud of what I've achieved. I've achieved more than I thought I would in the time frame that I did."
After a hard nine months, Lauren said her mum has now 'started to feel a bit more like herself' and has been able to go back to her work. She added: "She's certainly getting there now."
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