Sarah Clarke, a 35-year-old mother from Leeds, has lost an astonishing 17 stone after giving up a habit of eating up to 12 bags of crisps a day. At her heaviest, she weighed 31 stone 6lbs and wore a size 32, using food as a comfort mechanism to cope with trauma.
Her weight led to health issues including sleep apnoea, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. The turning point came when she struggled to keep up with her 11-year-old daughter at the park. She joined Slimming World in January 2022, losing 3 stone 13lbs naturally, before undergoing gastric sleeve surgery on the NHS in June 2022.
Over two and a half years, Sarah dropped to 14 stone 1lb and now wears a size 16. She cooks healthy meals from scratch such as curries and stir-fries, and exercises with a personal trainer. However, she is left with a stone of excess skin, which the NHS has refused to remove three times.
Sarah is now fundraising £10,000 for skin removal surgery, describing the loose skin as “scars of my old life” that prevent her from swimming or wearing sleeveless clothes. She leads a mental health peer support group and says she has “broken the cycle of obesity”.
