Mum posted daily pics of EVERYTHING she ate…and didn’t ‘cheat’ to make her followers proud
Kerry Swift, 27, decided to make a change after seeing unflattering photos of herself at her son's Christening
AN overweight mum has lost a whopping SIX STONE after keeping an Instagram diary of everything she ate.
Kerry Swift, 27, went from 15.5st to a svelte 9.5st in just 19 months.
Kerry, a full-time mum to son Oliver, two, used to splash out £20 a day on takeaways with her electrician husband Andy, 30.
However, at 5ft6 hit her BMI hit a worryingly high of 34.7 - making her morbidly obese.
Kerry felt humiliated by the size 22 pictures of herself taken at her son’s christening in October 2014, so started to document her every single meal she ate on image sharing website Instagram, in the hope it would inspire her to stick to a healthy diet.
Amazingly, she got to her target weight in just 19 months – enabling her to fit into a slim size eight.
Kerry now credits her Instagram account @swkerry23 - which has 16,000 followers - to her success.
Kerry said: “Posting photos on Instagram really helped me lose weight.
“It was brilliant to see people inspired by my meals, and putting it out into the public domain definitely helped keep me on track.
“Every time I was tempted to have a cheat meal, I thought of my followers and would cook something green instead.”
Kerry says that when she was growing up she always felt like one of the larger women in her group of friends, but at the same time she never put much thought into her appearance.
She said: “I took it as a given that I was larger than my friends and never thought about what I was putting into my body.”
What’s more, when Kerry fell pregnant, she says that that she used this as an excuse to have extra helpings of takeaway as well as cakes and chocolates.
On a regular day, Kerry would eat sugary cereal for breakfast, followed by a Tesco meal deal for lunch complete with a sugary drink and packet of crisps.
She would then munch on a takeaway curry for dinner - totting up to a whopping 4,000calories and £100 a week on takeaways.
She said: “I didn’t feel like the calories counted because I had a bump anyway and figured it’d drop off when I gave birth.
RELATED STORIES
“But when Oliver was born, the weight stayed on.”
It wasn’t until October 2014, when she weighed over 15 stone and wore a dress size 22, that she decided to do anything about her weight.
Kerry said: “I saw the photos of myself at Oliver’s christening and all I could see were my rolls of fat and unflattering outfit.
“I was just really ashamed of how I looked, I hated them.
“It made me cringe. It was a special day for him and I feel like I ruined it.”
It was after this that Kerry decided that she couldn’t hide from the truth anymore and resolved to make a serious change.
The same month, Kerry joined Slimming World and swapped her previously unhealthy takeaways with home cooked meals.
She began eating fruit for breakfast and a home prepped meal for dinner.
She was so pleased with her creations that she started posting pictures of the meals on her Instagram account to keep track of hat she was eating.
She said: “I’ve always liked to cook and I love Instagram.
“I found my healthy meals looked great in photos, so I decided to share my results and use the feedback to stay on track.
“It became a hobby - I would create fun meals and then post them to my Instagram account.
“I started gaining more followers and the positive comments from strangers inspired me to keep going.”
Within a month, Kerry had already lost 1st 3lbs, and gained another 100 followers to her account.
As numerous comments and followers rolled in, Kerry was posting photos of every meal on the app and says the popularity of her page helped her stay on track with her diet.
She recalled: “My food diary was public so I didn’t want to taint my profile with unhealthy takeaways. I knew my followers would notice if I skipped a meal so I was never tempted to cheat.”
Her most popular dish was carrot cake waffles for breakfast - which got 190 likes.
In April, the mum hit her goal weight and is chuffed to now be wearing a sleek size eight.
What’s more, she has continued to post a daily food diary to inspire her 16,000 Instagram followers with her incredible weight-loss.
She also posts workout snaps from the gym and finds that her followers encourage her for putting in the extra effort, keeping her weight down.
Her followers have even begun to thank her for inspiring their own weight loss journeys.
Kerry added: “Putting my weight-loss journey out in the public domain kept me on track, so now I’m showing off the results online too.
“It feels brilliant to be able to be inspiring other people to achieve their goals too.”