Photos: Mother Forced To Lose 72 kg In 9 Months After Her Children Complained She Didn't Look Like Other Mummies

A mother has lost 12 stone in nine months after her children begged her to take control of her weight.
Annette Skinner, 46, shrunk from a size 32 to a size 14 after her son Alex came home upset that she didn't look like other mothers.
Her daughter Kelly, 25, was also concerned her mother's weight would restrict Alex's upbringing, and he too would be bullied as she had been as a child.
At her peak, Annette, from Walsall, weighed 25st 10lb. She says she was so big that people didn't realise she was pregnant with Alex. 

Annette Skinner was nearly 26 stone when her children begged her to lose weight. She has since lost more than 12 stone and now runs regularly 

She told MailOnline: 'I have never been skinny, but over the years, because I was happy and "comfortable", I just piled on the pounds. 
'Chocolate was my biggest downfall – I got through a few big bars of Galaxy a day. Any junk food I opened, I had to finish. 
See more pictures after the cut;

‘I was basically in total denial – it was the story of my life. I became a hermit of my own making, never seeing what other people saw. 
'Maybe that was because I never looked below my neckline in the mirror. As stupid as that sounds, it’s true.

‘I’d tried loads of diets, but even if I lost weight, I would always put it back on – and some.'
Over the years, Annette's family had voiced their concerns about her weight and her health - she was often breathless and suffered from sore knees. 'I refused to go to social events that would put me in situations where my weight would be the topic on everyone’s lips.

'And instead of listening to my husband Kevin when he was trying to help me, I would just bite his head off by saying: “if you don’t like it, you know where the door is!” 
'He was just worried about me, but I always had to retaliate. I think the amount of weight I had to lose just seemed so much that it was a mountain I didn't think I could face climbing.
The turning point came when Annette’s daughter Kelly sat her down to voice her fears about her mother’s health. 

‘She said she didn’t want Alex to feel the same way she had growing up – not being able to join in with normal activities a child should do.
‘Growing up she was the one in the class that could never go to swimming parties as I would never go in the pool with her. She was also bullied at school for having the "fat" mum. 
'We couldn't do the simplest of activities such as going to the park due to me being short of breath or as the mother-daughter shopping trips that she watched all my friends doing.'
To add to her guilt, the next day Alex came home from school and dropped his own bombshell.
'He came in and said: "Mummy, why can’t you look like other mummies?”

‘It quite honestly broke my heart. I was in pieces and something inside me just switched and I thought “this really needs to happen”. 
At this point, Annette had been a member of her local Fitness First gym for a year, having been bought a membership the year before by her mother. 
Annette says: 'I would go, but make any excuse to do as little as I could. I would also convince myself I had "exercised" – and that gave me a right to eat what I wanted - even if I'd just done five minutes of walking. 
‘My confidence was also so low that I had the constant fear of everyone staring at the fat lady on the treadmill.
‘Now I know that most people don’t give two hoots about other people in the gym – we’re all there for the same reason.'
But on 1st August 2011, Annette took the bull by the horns and began her exercise programme. 'I decided to get a personal trainer to kick me a kick start,' she says.
'He asked me "what do you want to achieve", and I said “I just want to look normal” – the last time I had looked normal was when I was a teenager.’
Her initial sessions with Paul, her personal trainer, were ‘very hard work’, involving a combination of walking and the bike. She then went on to have three sessions a week.
‘He never put me on a diet – he just gave me tips on how to eat healthily. There was no crash dieting as I just knew that wouldn’t be sustainable in the long term. 
‘I lost two stone straight away because I was so big, then around one stone a month.’