Yahoo Finance Mum who had a heart attack while playing with her children has lost an incredible 17 stone
A mum who suffered a heart attack while playing with her daughters has lost an incredible 17 stone after realising her weight might mean she would not see them grow up.
Nikita Orr's weight increased after she struggled with postnatal depression following the birth of her first daughter when she was just 15.
After years of eating up to four Chinese takeaways a week and snacking on crisps and chocolate, the mum-of-two tipped the scales at 26st 4.5lb in January 2019.
Orr, 23, from Whitburn, West Lothian, Scotland, says she could barely walk due to her size 24 frame, which left her in "constant agony" and she felt embarrassed to take her kids to school.
In fact she was so ashamed of her body she banned all the mirrors in her house.
The turning point came when she suffered a heart attack while playing with her daughters, Kayden, seven, and Ava, four, and realised she might not be around to watch them grow up.
She immediately ditched the junk food and started working out and the pounds dropped off until she was able to have a £10k weight loss op.
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Now weighing a healthy 9st, Orr says she's proud to look at her size 10 body in the mirrors she now has all around her home.
Recalling how she felt at her heaviest, Orr says: "I could barely walk, my legs and thighs would be rubbing together and I was in constant agony because of the excess skin.
"It was horrible.
"My most embarrassing memory is from when we were at the soft play.
"I got stuck in between two rolling cylinders and I had to get one of the managers to come and get me out.
"Now I'm the first one on the bouncy castles - there's no stopping me now!"
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Before her weight loss Orr would typically eat four slices of toast for breakfast, two pot noodles and a packet of crisps for lunch and three or four helpings of takeaway at dinner.
"My main trigger for gaining weight was that food was my comfort, and when I was down I would eat and eat and eat, just to try and find some sort of comfort," she explains.
"I battled with postnatal depression and trying to learn how to be a mum at a young age.
"My weight prevented me from living a normal life.
"I couldn't run around after my children, I could barely manage to get up the stairs in my house without gasping for breath.
"It took a lot for me to go out because I had such low self esteem.
"I tortured myself by taking all the mirrors down and eating as much as I could to try and make myself feel better."
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It wasn't until she suffered a heart attack when playing with her children in December 2019, that the support worker fully committed to losing weight.
"I was running about with kids at night and I started getting pains in my chest, but I was prone at that time to getting blood clots so I never thought it could've been a heart attack," she explains.
After phoning NHS24, she took herself to St John's Hospital, Livingston, where she stayed for two days, and was told she'd had a heart attack due to her weight.
A doctor told her if she didn't lose weight, she could be dead within the year.
"I was scared that I wouldn't be around for my two beautiful girls growing up, and that if I didn't start making the changes I would never find true happiness within myself or with another person," she says.
"This gave me the kick up to do what I needed to do!"
Orr lost around 6st before having a sleeve gastrectomy, where a portion of the stomach is stapled off and then the excess removed, in March 2020.
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The £10,000 surgery saw Orr lose four stone in two months, and she booked a liposuction and tummy tuck surgery for November 17, 2020.
Orr has also changed her diet completely; now eating a yoghurt for breakfast, cheese and crackers for lunch and a small home-cooked dinner, with no snacks in-between.
It took a year from her heart attack to reach her current weight - a healthy 9st, and newly engaged to her fiancé Tony Clarke, 25, Orr says her life is great now.
"I am the fittest that I have ever been, I can shop in ordinary clothes stores, and I have learned to love myself and be the best mum that I can be to my two beautiful girls."
"Now that I've lost weight it has given me a chance to have a life again."
Additional reporting SWNS.
