Woman shed eight stone after car crash scare

Claire Healey, 37, of Brighouse, near Bradford, was so overweight at nearly 20 stone that she couldn't even bend down to tie up her shoelaces and her size put her life in danger when a tyre burst on her vehicle last July causing it to land upside down.

It was that experience which persuaded the size 24 driver to reconsider her lifestyle as she had struggled to get out of the wreck.

She has now spent 6,000 on a treatment to slim down – using her exhaust fabricator husband George's redundancy money which was earmarked for him to buy a Harley Davidson but instead was gifted to his wife.

The insurance company team leader was travelling to work in her Suzuki when the accident happened.

Her car hit a safety barrier, and then turned on to its roof, landing between lanes on the M621.

She said: "I didn't know how injured I was. There was blood dripping from me onto the roof but I wasn't sure where from. I managed to unfasten the safety belt and collapsed onto the roof.

'The side window had smashed and I knew I had to try to get through it but I was worried I was so fat I would get stuck and have to wait in the middle of the motorway to be cut out.

"By this time other people had stopped and gathered round the car. With the help of two men pulling me I did get out but a couple of times I thought I was stuck. Even in the middle of all the trauma I remember feeling embarrassed.

"If I had been just a few pounds heavier I would not have been able to squeeze through that window. I decided there and then, as I waited in the hospital for treatment, that this time I would succeed in losing the weight."

Mrs Healey escaped with only minor injuries. Until that point she had enjoyed a lifestyle which saw her drink up to 12 halves of beer and several shots on a night out, along with chocolate, crisps and pastries in a normal day.

She could only get through the day on a mixture of steroids and antibiotics. After the crash she began a medically-supervised weight loss system, which gradually replaced normal foods with high protein meal replacements and she dropped eight stones in seven months.

The diet was combined with body treatments to both speed up fat loss and tone the body, so that dieters who lose large amounts of weight are not left with sagging skin. Mrs Healey now weighs a slim 11 stone and fits into a size 12-14.