There wasn't a dry eye left in the house when Sam Jones stood on the scales and achieved her 10st weight loss. The mum-of-three has gone from a size 30 to a size 16 in just a year and a half and was overwhelmed with emotion after hitting the double-figure mark.
Sam, from Tylorstown in the Rhondda, decided to start her weight loss journey with Slimming World in 2021 when her daughters were just one and two. She had gone through two pregnancies within two years of each other and said she "piled" on the weight during that time.
Sam has tried Slimming World before and she described how she would lose weight but end up going back to her old ways. This time around she was so motivated to reach those double figures and now there is no going back.
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Sam, 36, 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 she lost weight Sam said her body was starting to fail her. She said she was struggling to walk up the stairs and would be out of breath and sweating doing 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."
Before she started her weight-loss journey Sam's diet would consist of four pieces of white bread toast with butter for breakfast. This would be accompanied by a cup of tea with sugar and followed by lunch which would usually be a Greggs or chips and sausage from the fish shop. For dinner she would eat something like chips with pizza or she would have a takeaway. "I very rarely cooked," she said. In addition to this she would have packets of crisps and chocolate in between her meals.
Now for breakfast she usually prepares overnight oats or she will make baked oats with fruit and natural yoghurt. That is usually followed by a jacket potato and salad or a Slimming World ready meal. For dinner she likes to make a lot of curries from scratch, opting for bigger portions so she can use the leftovers the following day. She tries to keep her syns – used in Slimming World dieting to track the amount of 'not-free' food that you are allowed to eat – between five and seven a day by avoiding snacks.
"My diet now consists of preparing food and I would never do that before," said Sam. "I make sure I have three good meals a day so I know I am full."
The journey has been filled with emotion and Sam and her consultant were left in tears when she hit the double figures mark at 10st loss last week. She said the whole class were crying with her as they knew just how much it meant. She added: "They are like my family."
Another emotional moment for Sam was when she could fit into sizes in what she described as "normal shops". She said she held off buying new clothes for as long as possible 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."
Last summer Sam went on a family holiday to Cyprus and it was when she was on the aeroplane that she realised just how much of a life-changing weight loss she had achieved even by then. "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 credits her weight loss to Slimming World consultant Nicola Jones who runs a class in Porth Plaza on a Friday. Sam also does a bounce about fitness class twice a week with her friend Nadine which she could never have imagined doing before.
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