We're half the couple we used to be (From Echo)

We're half the couple we used to be

5:00pm Monday 9th November 2009 in

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A DEVOTED couple, who together weighed 50 stones, face a fitter future after shedding half their combined weight.

Natalie Ball, 35, and husband Stephen, 47, of London Road, Benfleet, have transformed their diet and lifestyle are now planning a second child.

Today Natalie weighs a svelte ten stone, down from more than 20 stone, while Stephen has gone from 31 stone to around 17.

Natalie was keen to tell how she had to overcome some emotional demons from her childhood before she embarked on her impressive slim down.

She said: “I was bullied at school, but told myself I was big boned.

“I was actually kidding myself. Throughout my teens, and until my late twenties, I weighed around 14 or 15 stone. Being 5ft 4ins tall I was overweight.”

A bout of post natal depression following the birth of her daughter Jessica, who is now six years old, saw her weight balloon out of control.

She said: “I was extremely low and hated myself for feeling the way I did, but there was nothing I could do to stop it.

“I started to comfort eat, but after eating loads of junk I felt guilty, so I turned to alcohol. I was on the borders of becoming an alcoholic.”

It was two incidents in the spring of 2008 which changed the couple’s lives for ever.

The first was when the pair broke their specially-strengthened bed.

Natalie recalls: “We were lying down and suddenly the bed slumped in the middle and the drawers collapsed. It sounds funny now, but at the time we were horrified, too ashamed to tell anyone about it.”

Stephen said he was due to have a gastric band fitted around the same time in a desperate bid to improve his health.

He had chronic asthma and sleep apnoea – where he would temporarily stop breathing during the night – and was told by doctors he would be dead in five years if his lifestyle didn’t change.

He said: “I think when Natalie saw what I was going through she thought ‘I don’t want to have the same procedure’.

“The penny just dropped for both of us and we realised we needed to change our lifestyles.”

The couple, who together run furniture restoration firm Furniture Medics, signed up to the Slimming World programme. In just over a year their weight had literally fallen off. Takeaways were replaced with grilled fish and vegetables, while the pair regularly exercised.

The couple say their lives have been transformed beyond belief.

Natalie said: “We were never in a position to even think about having more children because we didn’t have a future.

“Now we hope to have a long and happy one, hopefully with the patter of tiny feet soon!”