A Staffordshire mum is embarking on a new career after winning an award for maintaining her 6st 10lbs weight loss for an incredible nine years. Sarah Williams, 41, who’s been named Slimming World ’s Diamond Member of the Year 2024, says her weight was holding her back from enjoying her life with her family, including going on bike rides or swimming with her children. It wasn’t until 2013, when she and her husband Lee decided to get married after 13 years together though, that Sarah decided it was time to make a change.
After losing her dad in 2012, Sarah took comfort in food. She says: “I’d been overweight from being a child. And by the time I had my children, Millie, now 18 and Maisie, now 14, in my late twenties, my weight had completely spiralled out of control.
I was at my heaviest after my dad passed – I felt unhappy and was ashamed and frustrated with my weight.” Sarah tried various quick-fix weight loss methods, such as meal replacement shakes, in the past but found them difficult to sustain. She says: “I was living on shakes as a substitute for food and if I lost any weight, it always felt impossible to keep it off.
And before I knew it, I’d be back at square one. I was just miserable and hungry, and knew I couldn’t carry on this way.” In a new study, more than half of UK adults (56%) say they’ve followed a fad diet in an attempt to lose weight with almost three-quarters of those (71%) reporting they didn't lose any weight or didn’t lose as m.