Mum lost 16 stone after being left 'mortified' by photo of herself queuing for a buffet

A mum lost more than 16 stone after feeling "mortified" when she saw a photo of herself queuing for a buffet at a family christening. Kelly Barker, 42, said she had been overweight her whole life and was made to eat her school lunch alone.

After years spent "hiding away" in baggy clothes and avoiding looking in full length mirrors, the primary school teacher decided she had to make a change, the Liverpool ECHO reports. Kelly, from St Helens, said: "If I'm honest I've kind of been overweight all my life. [When I was at school] I was overweight and my mum, through the GP, had referred me to a dietician.

"I always remember this dietician coming into class, taking me out of class and weighing me in the head teacher's office, and that stuck with me as something that really devastated me. I had to sit on a table on my own at lunchtimes because I had to have a different meal in school and it was very clear to other children how different I was.

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"I feel that's where a lot of my not feeling good enough and not having good self-esteem has come from. Then I started to be more aware that I was bigger than other children and then food became a comfort."

Kelly said she soon entered a vicious cycle of low self-esteem, which caused her to restrict her diet and then comfort eat as she continued to pile on the pounds. She said: "I think I got good at hiding from myself.

"I only had photos on social media that I'd taken that I thought I looked OK in. I didn't have full length mirrors in my house, I ordered clothes online that were the biggest, baggiest, shapeless clothes I could find."

But when a picture was taken of Kelly at a family christening