A LEOMINSTER mother who was at risk of developing diabetes and heart disease was inspired to lose weight following her son's cancer treatment.

Weighing just under 18 stone and at 5"7, farmer's wife Lyndsay Rogers was obese before her weight loss journey began.

She tried numerous fad diets and found it near impossible to find enough time to exercise.

It wasn’t until her son’s leukaemia treatment was nearing its end that she decided to change her life for the sake of her and her family.

The 38-year-old said: "I had been a yo-yo dieter for as long as I could remember. I was always on the lookout for a quick fix and was an experienced professional when it came to fad diets.

"The problem was I never wanted to address the reasons behind why I was over eating, so every time I’d lose several stone I’d just put it back on again."

When her son, Ted, was diagnosed with leukaemia, it 'shook' the whole family, she said.

"We would be in and out of the hospital every four weeks with various appointments, so during this time I really got to know everyone really well."

She decided to join a programme called LighterLife in Hereford which helped her lose up to one stone a month.

"Honestly, I could have continued using food for comfort during my son’s health scare but I knew it would start affecting my health if I did," she said.

"I needed to lose weight so I could be healthy for him and the rest of my family. That’s when I set myself a goal of reaching my ideal weight at the same time his leukaemia was officially in remission.”

LighterLife combines a diet programme with a unique behaviour-change programme with includes Transactional Analysis (TA) and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) techniques.

The sessions helped Mrs Rogers understand why she had a problem with overeating and helped change her mindset towards food in the future.

She lost a total of five stones and eight pounds.