The Chase winner uses her £10k prize to create a new body as she was horrified by her TV appearance
Jenny Hoffman, 50, from Salford, Manchester, lost five stone on a £250-a-week diet called Alevere Therapy
A MUM who appeared on The Chase has used her winnings to transform her body after being “disgusted” by how she looked on TV.
Jenny Hoffman, 50, from Salford, Manchester, won £10,500 on the ITV quiz show, after sparking outrage among viewers when she admitted she’d “planned to take the minus offer”.
Thankfully she resisted the urge and beat Chaser Shaun Wallace to add £3,000 to the prize fund.
But the elation of winning was marred when Jenny, a divorced sales manager who has a 28-year-old daughter and two grandchildren, aged five and four, saw herself on telly.
She admitted: “I felt disgusted by my size, I looked huge.
“I glanced down at my stomach where I was sitting on the sofa watching the show and realised it was massive.
“I knew I was big, but seeing myself on the show was a massive wake-up call.
“I knew instantly what I was going to do with my money – I was finally going to lose the weight that had been making me unhappy for so long.”
Jenny has been good to her word, enrolling on a diet called Alevere Therapy, which is available in 30 clinics nationally and costs around £250 a week.
Devised by Dr Mark Palmer, of Leeds, it’s a medically-supervised system of meal replacements which is combined with treatments to tighten the skin and target stubborn areas of fat, so that clients improve their shape as well as lose weight.
From being a size 22, tipping the scales at more than 16st when she took part in the show, she is now a svelte size 10 to 12 and more than five stone lighter.
“I did it on a diet that works quickly and my life is very different now,” she said.
“I now fit into size 10 jeans for the first time ever, it is an amazing feeling.”
Jenny spent £4,000 achieving her new look at the Blackburn branch of the clinic – and her waist has shrunk from 44 inches to 28 inches.
She admitted: “The diet cost me a huge chunk of my winnings, and there is no way I could have afforded it if I hadn’t come away from the show with the money, but it was definitely the right thing to spend it on.
“This diet took the decision making about food away from me, and that was what I needed. I feel amazing now.”
The Alevere diet therapy explained
According to those who created the diet, clients eat five protein-based nutritional supplements per day, each containing around 100 calories.
These are sachets of dried nutrients that can be made into various products, including omelette, pizza and chocolate desserts.
There are 35 flavours to choose from. The savoury dishes are eaten with normal vegetables.
Weekly sessions of ultrasound and skin tightening treatments help to stop the problem of loose skin after major weight loss
The diet is in three stages. At each stage, a wider range of natural foods is reintroduced.
At the end, to avoid any rebound weight gain, there is a weight stabilisation programme which takes around one month . By the end of this the client is back on a healthy, normal and balanced diet.
The average client is on the therapy for 16 weeks.
Prior to losing the weight, Jenny admitted that she had become “a bit of a hermit”.
She explained: “I only did The Chase because I thought my body would be hidden most of the time, and only my face on view.
“I was known as the person who would never turn up at work social events. I would promise to go, I would intend to go, and I would get all ready; hair, makeup the lot.
“And then I would look at myself in the mirror, hate what I saw and stay in and order a pizza instead. It was a vicious circle.”
Jenny had tried several diets in the past, but struggled to stick to them.
She said: “The pattern was always the same. I would lose a couple of stone and then people would begin complimenting me and I would lose the motivation to continue.
“I had clothes in my wardrobe ranging from size 14 to size 22.
“In the end I had given up. I didn’t exercise and my life was about eating.
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“I would eat bacon butties at work every day, I would buy myself snacks of chocolate or crisps three times in the afternoon. I would have 20 cups of tea or coffee with sugar in an average day. My evening meal would be a takeaway, but not one meal but two.
“I would drink a couple of glasses of wine a night, but at the weekend that would become a couple of bottles.
“People just can’t believe how much I have changed and my life is like day from night now - and when I am invited out I do turn up these days.”
Last month we told how brunch could be the key to losing weight, according to experts.
Jenny’s diet before
Breakfast: Four slices of thickly buttered toast
Mid-morning: Bacon butty
Lunch: A baguette filled with chicken tikka and a bag of crisps
Mid-afternoon: Three chocolate bars or chocolate and crisps
Evening: Two Chinese takeaway meals, usually chicken chow mein and a sweet and sour meal; or a large pizza with stuffed crust, with garlic bread, wedges and chicken nuggets
Throughout the day: 20 hot drinks with sugar
Jenny’s diet now
Breakfast: Fat free Greek yoghurt with passionfruit couli and granola
Mid-morning: Some grapefruit or pear
Lunch: A wrap filled with meat, and salad
Mid-afternoon: Some nuts and raisins or low fat crisps
Evening: Jacket potato with mince and veg, or salmon with veg and new potatoes