A YOUNG mother revealed how a New Year’s resolution led to an amazing six-stone weight loss.

Jenni Lee, 26, vowed to shed the bulk of her size 20, 16-and-a-half-stone weight last January as a New Year challenge.

Now she is a svelte size eight to 10, weighing just 10 stone.

The mother-of-one from Bicester said she had always been big, and only put on half-a-stone while pregnant with her 16-month-old daughter Leah.

But the final straw came when she realised how miserable her weight was making her.

She said: “I was so unhappy in myself. I had tried the gym before I fell pregnant but had not lost much weight “I didn’t like the way clothes looked on me and I wanted to do something about it before my daughter was old enough to realise what was going on.”

A healthy person’s Body Mass Index (BMI) is between 19 and 25 per cent, overweight is 25 to 30 and more than 30 is obese.

This time last year Ms Lee weighed 16-and-half-stone, and at 5ft 6ins, had a BMI of 37, placing her in the clinically obese category.

She would skip breakfast and by lunchtime was so hungry she would feast on sandwiches and crisps. Dinner would be calorie-laden pastries and pies with chips, and she had high fat and sugary snacks between meals.

But now, after radically changing the way she eats and taking up regular exercise, she has managed to shed six-and-a-half stones.

She lost a total of 83 inches off her body, including 16 inches from her waist, 10 inches off her bust, seven off each of her thighs and six off each arms.

She joined Weight Watchers and has halved her serving sizes by filling up on fruit and vegetables.

For breakfast she now eats a slice of wholemeal toast with cheese spread, lunch will be a prawn wrap and dinner will usually consist of roasted vegetables with either chicken or fish. She also exercises three times a week.

She now has a BMI of 23, putting her safely back in the healthy weight category, and is engaged to fiancé Dean Hood.

Ms Lee said she wanted to inspire others to lose weight the healthy way rather than relying on the NHS to foot the bill for procedures like gastric band surgery.

She said: “I wouldn’t have ruled out gastric band surgery if I couldn’t have done it naturally but I wouldn’t have asked for the NHS to pay for it.

“Since getting rid of the weight I feel so much better in myself. I’m so much more confident.”