WOMAN

CONGLETON'S super slimmer Dee Goodwin spoke this week of how her dramatic weight loss had transformed her life as well as her figure.

Dee, aged 30, was embarrassed about her 16 stone seven pound figure, and decided enough was enough when trying on a size 24 dress.

She dumped her regular round of junk food for a vegeterian diet plan, and now is a trim size 12 after shedding a whopping seven stones in two years.

Her success and determination to succeed won her the slimmer of the year award from the Congleton branch of the Slimming Magazine Club.

Her story also featured in the Sun newspaper, and Dee is pictured left showing off the figure which was just a distant dream two years ago.

"I never ever thought I would achieve my target weight,"said Dee, from Avon Drive, Congleton, who works at the Congleton Health Store in Bridge Street.

"I became quiet and withdrawn before I joined the slimming club, did not want to go out, and was uncomfortable being around people.

"However coming down to nine stones has given me a lot more confidence, and I now do more and have more fun.

"I have received numerous compliments, and everyone has been really nice and said how pleased they are for me."

A typical day's food for Dee before she started her diet would be a glass of Coke and two packets of crisps for breakfast, followed by two oatcakes while on the way to work.

A mid-morning snack would be chocolate and more crisps, followed by chips for lunch and what she described as more 'junk food and rubbish' in the afternoon and evening.

Before her diet she boasted a 48DD-40-49 figure, unrecognisable from the new 34D-28-37 Dee.

"I decided I had to do something about my weight when I was trying on a size 24 dress for a party," she said.

"On the following Monday a woman came into my shop, and told me that she had lost four stones at a Slimming Magazine Club run by Trisha Conroy. I joined that night."

Dee lost five stones in the first year of her diet, which allowed her 1,000 calories a day and 500 for treats.

The extra confidence her new figure has given Dee persuaded herself and her husband Kevin to renew their marriage vows at a St Valentine's Day service at a local church.

"I never believed Kevin could love me the way I was before, and he used to get fed up of the way I moaned about my weight."

Dee fosters cats for a local cat rescue, and one of her ambitions now is to do a sponsored parachute jump to raise money for animal charities, which she actively supports.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.