Super slimmer Sara held an evening to tell others her story after the threat of surgery led her to lose half her body weight.
Sara Chambers Ross told her story at a self-help evening at Kidderminster Library in an aim to inspire others to lose weight and get healthy.
The former social worker, who grew up in Kidderminster but now lives in Church Stretton, Shropshire, returned to the town to talk about how she went from 26st to 10st 7lb after her GP had put her on a waiting list for stomach staple surgery in 2009.
She bought a self-help package by weight-loss expert Ali Campbell, who also appeared with her at the Kidderminster talk, and never looked back.
She said: “When I was told I needed surgery I was petrified, so I thought I have got to give myself another chance to lose the weight.
“I started to eat more healthily and it began to work but I knew this would only be temporary until I made a permanent change in my life and attitude.
“That was when I discovered Ali and I finally started to believe that I could lose the weight. One of the techniques is to imagine your favourite foods, in my case chips and crisps, mixed with something really disgusting to stop you wanting them.
“Ali taught me to completely change my relationship with food and got to the root cause of how eating affected my emotions.”