Mum who comfort ate her way to a size 20 sheds staggering 7st in her SLEEP
At her heaviest the 27-year-old tipped the scales at 17st - but she says a hypnosis app changed her relationship with food for good
A MUM who gorged on junk food - regularly scoffing crisps, chocolate and takeaways – claims she hypnotised herself slim in her sleep using a £6.99 app.
Janine Dooley turned to food for comfort after a terrifying home invasion in March 2010 where she was confronted by an axe-wielding stranger.
The 27-year-old went from a svelte size 10 to tipping the scales at 17st 7lbs – sometimes eating 24 Jaffa Cakes just as a snack.
Battling with her weight for years Janine was desperate for anything that would work, then she discovered a hypnosis app that she plays in her sleep
She claims the app helped her shrink back down to 10st 4lb.
“I used food as a comfort blanket. After going through something that terrifying, I wasn’t interested in dieting and the gym,” she said.
“I thought, ‘You only live once,’ so I ate what I wanted.”
Ashamed by her size, Janine, who has a son, Oscar, one, with her draftsman partner, Darren Kelly, 32, at one point slimmed right down and even became a consultant at a local slimming club.
But, still traumatised by the terrifying break-in at her home, the pounds started creeping back and she turned to dangerous diet pills to try and control her waistline.
“They made me feel terrible,” she said.
“I was really shaky and thirsty. That’s no way to live your life at all.
“Eventually, I decided to stop being a consultant. I just didn’t feel as if people would listen to me, and I couldn’t help them if I wasn’t even helping myself.”
Janine realised that until she came to terms with her trauma she would never be able to control her weight.
Recalling the break-in she said: “I had just been in the shower and was walking back to my room – which was on the ground floor – when I saw my door close.
“I’ve got four brothers, so assumed it’d be one of them pranking me. I kicked the door open to see a man in there holding an axe.
“I said to him, ‘Take what you want but don’t hurt me.’
“He made me stay in my room while he rummaged through the house. At first, I was frozen with fear, but then I thought, ‘No, I’m not going to let you take everything my parents worked hard for,’ so I grabbed my phone and dialled 999’.”
Thankfully, the police arrived swiftly and the burglar was arrested, charged and later sent to prison.
But, shaken to her core, Janine could not overcome her fear that it would happen again.
Comfort eating, she sought solace in food and struggled to find any motivation to stay fit.
The one positive was meeting Darren in April 2010 in the pub where she worked.
But she struggled to shake her unhealthy relationship with food.
Constantly snacking on family bags of crisps and whole packets of biscuits during the day, in the evening she would tuck into a takeaway.
She also drank 14 litres of sugar-laden fizzy drinks a week.
“I can now see that I was addicted to food,” she said.
“Binge eating is so accepted that I didn’t realise what I was doing.
“So many of us out there will use their weekends as an excuse to eat unhealthily – but the difference for me was that it was all the time.”
Then, in late 2016, Janine and Darren started trying for a baby and in July 2017, little Oscar was born.
By then Janine was a size 20 and weighed 17st 7lb.
“Of course, it was partly baby weight, but I had also eaten far too much,” she said.
“I’d been a pig. I thought it was my time to ignore dieting, and that I was entitled to eat what I wanted.
“I ended up having a few issues during the pregnancy, with heart palpitations.
“I would be lying on the bed, feeling like I’d just sprinted, with my heart pounding away.
“My blood pressure was high too, and I had to have an emergency caesarean, as Oscar’s heart rate kept dipping.
“Looking back, I feel horrid. I can’t believe I was so irresponsible – risking both our lives because I thought food was everything.”
But having Oscar was the trigger she needed to change, desperate to prevent her son from inheriting her dysfunctional relationship with food.
At first, she tried a few more slimming groups before realising she needed to tackle the cause of her over-eating, rather than just her weight.
So, after reading about a hypnosis app called ‘’ on Mumsnet, she decided to give it a go.
“By this point, I’d spent hundreds on dieting. The app was only £6.99 – I had nothing to lose,” she said.
Downloading it in November 2017, it was the miracle Janine had been looking for – helping her to drop five dress sizes to a 10 and to slim down to just 10st 4lb.
MORE ON WEIGHT LOSS
She has also rediscovered her love of exercise.
“I would play the hypnosis app every night as I fell asleep, so its message was being relayed to my sub-conscious,” she said.
“The app teaches you four main things – eat slowly, only eat when you’re actually hungry, eat what you want, not what you can and stop when you feel full.
“It’s completely reprogrammed my thinking. Everyone is so amazed. But I have finally learned when to stop eating.
“Much more relaxed, I can also deal with my teenage trauma now. I have more time to enjoy my family, friends and my work, too, now my life is no longer controlled by food.”
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