Woman who 'tried every diet under the sun' loses an astonishing 19 stone
04.04.2022 - 22:13
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
A woman has shed almost half her body weight after trying 'every diet under the sun' and fearing she would get stuck in an airplane seat. Haleigh Walsh, 25, who weighed in at 32st 6lb and has lost 19st 4lb, once bought two seats for a flight to Portugal out of fear she would get trapped.
Now, following gastric bypass surgery, she has dropped to a size 12 and is feeling "really confident". The final stage on her weight loss journey is to have her loose skin - or "fatty apron" as she calls it - removed.
Haleigh, a beautician, had the £5,450 gastric bypass surgery in Lithuania and is returning there for the skin removal. Despite a lifetime struggle with weight that saw her needing a tailor made communion gown, aged seven, Haleigh forged ahead – opening a beauty salon in the Irish county of Tipperary in 2020.
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But, horribly conscious of her size 28 bulk, despite being complimented on her “pretty face,” Haleigh recalls her turning point on the July 2019 holiday to Portugal, saying: “I’d tried every diet under the sun and an old friend told me a horror story of a man who’d been so big he was marched out of his seat to the back of the plane.
"I was so terrified of that happening to me that I bought a second seat, so I wouldn’t be impacting anyone. I remember sitting there on the plane and thinking, ‘I am never doing this again’.”
At her 32st 6lb heaviest, 5ft 7in Haleigh’s body mass index (BMI) used to gauge a healthy weight, was 71.11. That was nearly triple the top of the NHS’ healthy range of between 18.5 to 24.9, meaning she was severely obese.
She said: “I was always overweight. I couldn’t get a communion dress in the shops. It had to be