A 28-year-old Greggs worker from Holywell, North Wales, who weighed 15st 7lb and wore a size 22, struggled to push her baby son in a wheelbarrow during a Halloween outing in 2021. Jess Hulley-Jones said she felt like a failure as a mother because her heavy weight made simple tasks exhausting and forced her to hide behind a fence sign.

"I was thinking, 'Oh my God, I can't push him in the wheelbarrow because I'm so overweight,'" says Jess, 28.

"I couldn't bend down to pick up the pumpkins either. They were so heavy and if I bent my knees, I couldn't get back up afterwards."

Standing 5ft 3in tall with a BMI of 38.4, she was classified as obese. Her son Theodore was 10 months old at the time. She recalled feeling judged by onlookers and asking her mother to delete an embarrassing photograph taken that day.

Finding a costume proved impossible, so she cut holes in a baggy white T-shirt and wore ripped jeans for trick-or-treating. Deciding to wait until after Christmas, she joined a local Slimming World group in January 2022 after encouragement from a friend.

Her weight gain began after leaving home in her early twenties, worsened by long shifts starting at 4am at Greggs, where she snacked on cakes and pastries before ordering multiple takeaways each week. During her pregnancy in 2020, she ate out of boredom and reached her peak weight by October 2021.

At Slimming World, she learned to eat unlimited Free Foods like lean meat and vegetables alongside measured portions. In her first month, she lost over a stone. By 2023, her weight dropped to 11st 7lb, though date nights pushed it back up to 13st 12lb before her fiancé Damon proposed in November.

Determined to reach her goal before their wedding, she swapped takeaways for healthier options like granola, fruit, chicken salads, and fakeaways. By November, she reached 9st 7lb and a size eight.

The couple married at Highfield Hall, Northop, North Wales, five days before Christmas 2025, with Theodore acting as pageboy. They have since welcomed a daughter named Addison, and Jess now runs Slimming World groups in Flint and Holywell.

What Jess ate before and after Slimming World

BEFORE:

BREAKFAST: none

SNACKS: Walkers cheese and onion crisps

LUNCH: Pasty, pizza, cake

DINNER: Takeaway, Chinese or McDonalds, or frozen nuggets and chips

DRINKS: No added sugar cordial

AFTER:

BREAKFAST: granola, fruit, yoghurt

LUNCH: pasta salad, savoury rice with chicken, Slimming World lunch bowl

DINNER: Fakeaways from Slimming World recipe book, like Sticky Chicken. Cottage pie with vegetables.

DRINKS: No added sugar cordial

Jess' Top Tips For Success

Be kind to yourself

Weight loss is hard enough without beating yourself up about things that have not gone right or if you have gained weight that week.

You can not change that but you can change what you do next. I always say to Slimming World members 'You are only one meal away from having another good day.'

Eat nutritional, filling meals

If you are filling up on high protein, high fibre foods you are far less likely to be looking in the snack cupboard because they are giving your body the nutrients it needs so base your meals around those types of food.

Compromise, don't sacrifice

If someone had told me I couldn't eat crisps again, I wouldn't have been able to do this.

You CAN still have a little bit of what you want every day. Just do it in moderation.

You can't have the chocolate and the sharing bag of crisps, but you can have a little bit of one of those things.

Consistency is key

Make small, consistent changes and stick with them until they become habits.

At Slimming World we might measure out milk, for example, because we're telling members they can have milk but just not in high amounts.

Measuring might feel strange at first but you get to the point where you just do it without thinking about it and those tiny changes can make a big difference.