A mum lost a staggering eight and a half stone after being left "mortified" when she was too big to be fastened into a fairground ride.
Karen Fay, 52, said she wanted the ground to swallow her up when she could not ride the Nickelodeon Land ride in Blackpool with her youngster daughter Charlotte.
Her seatbelt buckle wouldn’t fasten between Karen’s legs, meaning the ride could not start so she had to get off and walk back past a queue of onlookers.
After the incident, Karen was so upset she joined Slimming World the next day.
The mum-of-two used to feast on pork chops and chips, baguette and crisps and chocolatey snacks washed down with a glass of wine.
But since switching to fruit snacks, healthier meals, and gin soda, she has dropped a whopping six dress sizes.
After weighing 21st 7lb at her heaviest, Karen now weighs a trim 13st 1lb and has gone from a size 24 to a comfortable 12.
“My little girl was four at the time and she wanted to go on the ride," she said.
“I wasn’t going to go on, but the guy said do you want to go on it with her as they had adult seats so I said ‘okay, yeah’.
“The ride couldn’t start because it wouldn’t buckle. I was absolutely mortified. I just wanted the ground to open up and swallow me."
Karen, a director at her family-run specialist cleaning firm, piled on the pounds after having kids and weighed 21 st 7lbs after the birth of her second child Charlotte in 2004.
After the incident at Blackpool Pleasure Beach in 2008, she decided to do finally something about her weight.
She lost three stone following Slimming World’s food optimisation plans, but in 2014 she struggled to reach the pedals of her new car which was another jolt.
Karen, who’s originally from Glasgow but now lives in Morecambe, Lancs., added: “We went back the next year and I made a point of riding the ride and it felt absolutely amazing.
“I weighed about 17 stone, but I knew I could fit on the ride.
“I was in and out the doors of Slimming World for a few years and in 2014 we bought a new car and I could barely reach the pedals, I wasn’t comfortable at all.
“I was up and down, I’d lose a couple of stone and put a stone back on.”
In March 2020, at the start of lockdown, Karen weighed 17 stone and was attending virtual Slimming World meetings.
But when Lancashire was plunged into tier three restrictions in September, she decided she’d had enough of feeling unhappy with her weight and firmly stuck to the plan.
By May 2021, she had lost a total of 7st 7lbs and hit her initial target weight. But she knew she could lose more and lost another stone by September.
Karen added: “I looked at myself in the mirror and I said to myself ‘get a grip’ and I got absolutely stuck in.
“I’d started power walking and I had been challenged to do a couch to 5k in 2018. In April 2019, I ran my first 5k, it took me 45 minutes.
“All through lockdown I kept up my running every day. The hour’s exercise we were allowed outside I spent running.
“The weight started to come off, but I knew I could do more.”
Now a slimline 13st 1lb, Karen has lost eight inches off her bust, 11 inches off her hips and a whopping 25 inches off her waist.
Before, Karen would start the day with cereal and full fat milk or toast with butter followed by a baguette, salad bowl, chocolate bar and crisps and pork chops and chips for dinner.
Now she enjoys porridge or wholemeal toast with scrambled egg no butter for brekky, home made soups or pasta for lunch and salmon, air-fried potatoes and veg for dinner.
Her snacking habits have switched from crisps and chocolate to fresh fruit and she now enjoys gin sodas instead of wine.
Karen credits the dramatic weight loss with changing her life giving her back her self-esteem and confidence.
Now a confident runner, Karen completes a 5k three times a week and looks almost unrecognisable in photographs.
And she has trained as a Slimming World consultant which she does in her spare time to help inspire others to follow in her footsteps.
She added: “I weighed 21 and a half stone after the birth of my second child and I was miserable.
“My first thought every day was about my size, my weight and what clothes I was going to wear. I never felt comfortable.
“I think my whole attitude to life is more positive now.
“I’m happy, I’ve been successful at losing the weight and it’s given me a new lease of life.
“It’s given me my sparkle back. I had been involved in amateur dramatics and have been on stage, but a lot of the time it’s just a mask.
“But now my confidence levels are sky high. I hope I can help other people get their sparkle.”
