A 28st mum who nearly capsized a boat because of her excessive size 32 bulk has shed half her body weight using diet and exercise and celebrated turning 50 as a 13st 10lb size 14. Put on her first diet at just six years old, former teaching assistant Rachel Mellor, 50, says this triggered an unhealthy relationship with food that followed her through life.
But the final straw came for Rachel, of Ossett, West Yorkshire, who has two daughters, Catherine, 12, and university student Elizabeth, 23, with her accountant husband Richard, 52, on a seaside boat trip with her children.
She said: “We were living in Scarborough on the North Yorkshire coast at the time and I decided to take the kids out on a boat. It was a big thing, with at least 20 or so people on it already. But when I went to get on the boat dipped hugely under me.
