I was so fat I couldn’t put socks on & my son’s friend called me a ‘heifer’ – then I shed 9 stone without surgery

SITTING on the edge of her bed, Teighan Perry felt sick with shame.

Weighing close to 20 stone and size 22, she looked up and sheepishly asked her sporty husband Nigel if he could help put her socks on.

“I mumbled that the clothes I was wearing were too tight, but of course we both knew the real reason I couldn’t reach my feet anymore,” said Teighan, 33, from Nuneaton in Warwickshire.

“My belly had grown so big I couldn’t even dress myself properly anymore – it was simply mortifying. ‘How had I let this happen?’ I asked myself.”

At 20 stone, a size 22 and at 5’6’’, the 33-year-old mum-of-two was classed as extremely obese with a BMI of 44.1.

But it wasn’t until her son Keighan’s pal called her a ‘fat heifer’ that she knew something had to change.

“My weight affected me so much that I stopped letting my husband Nigel, 34, a primary school P.E. Coordinator, cuddle me,” she said. “The lack of intimacy massively affected our sex life.

“I hated myself and what I’d become. I couldn’t even do a short walk. My greed and lack of self-control meant I couldn’t spend quality time with my family.”

STRESS RELIEF

Teighan says her weight issues started after giving birth to her first son Keighan 13 years ago.

Stress, boredom and binge eating during Covid lockdowns made the Higher Level Teaching Assistant from Nuneaton balloon to over 20 stone with a BMI of over 44. 

“While I was never super-slim as a girl, I never really had any issues with food – but when I left school at 16 and started work at a travel agent, with all the freedoms that involved, I started to get bigger,” she said. 

“Not living at home, earning my own money and regularly going out and eating takeaways meant I had to worry about my usual size 14 clothes not fitting for the first time.

“I fell pregnant at 18, the dad wasn’t around, and the pregnancy was really tough. 

“Keighan was born two days before my 19^th birthday, then my life as I’d known it was over. Balancing work with being a single mum meant grabbing whatever food I could, invariably some ready meal or unhealthy snack to give me a quick energy boost.”

By the time Teighan turned 23, she was a size 18 and around 17 stone, and her confidence was so low. 

That’s when she met her husband Nigel through a dating app and love blossomed. 

The pair got engaged in June 2014 and she got pregnant again just before her February wedding. 

“I was very excited about Nigel and me starting our own family,” she recalled. “But the day after the wedding I ended up in hospital with a miscarriage – I found out I’d been pregnant with twins, and sadly lost one, but against all the odds, managed to carry the other until October, when Leighton was born.

“With the extra financial strains of having two small children, our main indulgence was massive portions of delicious food like cake, crisps and fried chicken.

“When the pandemic started it got worse – with constant indulgence in sugary, sweet treats to reward myself for getting through each day.

“I’d constantly wash down crisps and biscuits with Fanta or Lucozade all day, along with huge portions of lasagne, or fish and chips at meal times – along with pilfering the food our kids didn’t eat for their tea. Nigel works as a PE coordinator, so would easily burn off any excess calories, but I was expanding by the day.”

By 2021, Teighan was gorging on over 2,500 calories a day, avoiding mirrors and the scales at every opportunity.

“I’d have to ask Nigel to help me put on socks, blaming the clothes I was wearing when it was obviously my big belly getting in the way,” she admits.

“I wouldn’t let Nigel cuddle me, worried he’d touch my huge tummy – this was the man who loved me unconditionally, yet here I was, pushing him away.”

BEYOND BANTER

One day, in September 2021, Teighan overheard her son Keighan play with friends on his XBox, and it broke her heart.

“One boy teased him that his mum was a ‘fat heifer’ – normally he’d retort with some other banter, but he just sat in silence while I hid around the corner, hating the fact that he was being ridiculed for having a fat mum. He didn’t deserve that,” she said. 

It marked a pivotal moment for Teighan who couldn’t bear for her son to be teased over her appearance.

“I threw myself into researching diets online, and came across a low-calorie subscription service that guaranteed results.

I’d get low-calorie meals delivered to me, so I just had to stick to those – and ditch my usual diet – and it would work. There was no wiggle room for cheating, which I knew would’ve been my downfall.

“Nigel thought it was a great idea – he said he’d cook his and the kids’ meals.” 

From that day on Teighan swapped her usual breakfast of a massive bowl of sugary cereal for a low-cal cereal bar or small portion of porridge.

For lunch she’d have soup or a ‘small pot’ of rice and chicken, and for dinner she’d have cottage pie, or curry, but small portions.

Soon the weight started dropping off and by June she’d lost two stone and joined a gym for the first time.

“I started with swimming classes so I could stay covered under the water, then started Zumba classes where the lights would be off – my body confidence was still at rock bottom, and the thought of people staring at me was terrifying,” she says.

“By August I’d gone down to a size 16 and decided to use the know-how I’d got from the diet plan to make my own smaller-size portion meals, using the same containers I’d got from the diet. Upping my exercise to nine exercise classes a week, I really started to notice the difference.”

SWIMSUIT SELFIE

Another eight months on and Teighan had dropped down to 11.5 stone, losing 11.7 percent body fat. 

To celebrate, Nigel booked a holiday to Turkey, the family’s first trip abroad.

“The week before the holiday I decided to go and buy my first ever swimsuit,” she says.

“Taking a selfie of myself trying it on in the changing rooms, I burst into tears, unable to believe this was me,” she said. 

“That holiday was the best I could ever imagine, throwing myself down the waterslides with the boys, lying in my swimming costume by the pool – Nigel had recently had a knee operation, so I led the charge by being the active parent, and I loved it!

“Couple of weeks later I agreed to do a 10k charity obstacle race called Wolf run with some work colleagues. It was on the first anniversary of me starting my diet and I wanted to celebrate the new me, Nigel and the boys cheering me as I crossed the finish line with the biggest smile possible on my rather muddy face.

“We’ve just bought bikes for all the family so we can enjoy 20-mile weekend rides together, me always at the front urging the others to keep up. 

“Whenever I get a new dress or top, the boys are always the first to compliment me on how beautiful I look, which means the world to me. My eldest even came back from a football match recently and told me the same friend who’d called me a fat heffer asked him: ‘When did your mum get so skinny?’ – I’m so proud.

“Nigel constantly tells me he’s the luckiest man in the world, so proud to have me on his arm, how he can’t keep his eyes off me. We even went clubbing together the other week, dancing until the early hours like teenagers. I just feel like I’ve transformed myself and given my family and me a new lease of life.”

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September 14, 2023 at 04:20PM

from The Sun