Woman battles the bulge — and death of son — to lose 8 stone in 12 months

A Cork woman who lost eight stone in the past year has opened up about her struggle with obesity following the death of her son four years ago.

Carole Bradley, from Mitchelstown, weighed 23 stone this time last year before she won a Facebook competition for gym membership at b2a (Believe to Achieve).

“I won a 56-day programme at the gym and I was terrified going for my first weigh-in. I cried afterwards, I cried all day,” she said.

“But I kept going back. I started on a treadmill and when I started losing weight I was able to do more. Now I’m doing Zumba and I’ve done two mini-marathons and am thinking about doing a full one. I’d think nothing of going and walking 5k now.”

Carole, 56, admitted she gained a lot of weight after the death of her son, Chris. She began “comfort eating” as a way of coping with her grief. “When you’re 23 stone, people look at you and think the problem is that you’re just eating too much. And that’s a part of it but nobody could see what I was really going through.”

Chris, who had just become a father, passed away six months after being diagnosed with a brain tumour. It would have been his 35th birthday yesterday. “He was just amazing. He was so brave and so honest about it from day one,” said Carole.

“Whenever I felt like I couldn’t go on, something would happen, like one of Chris’ favourite songs coming on the radio, and it would be like he was looking down on me and telling me to keep going.”

Carole, who has two other children, also talks about her loss with a counsellor. “For a couple of weeks I hit a plateau. I didn’t lose any weight for a week or two — I actually gained a couple pounds. I was distraught. I was seeing a counsellor about my grief and was talking about how upset I was, and the weight loss actually brought up a lot of other things,” she said.

“I was saying how upset I was I had failed to lose eight stone and they said no, that’s not it, and I found myself saying I also failed to keep my son alive. And that had been the real problem.”

Working through her grief was hard, but Carole never stopped going to the gym and still sees a personal trainer three times a week. She also began eating small, healthy meals every two hours, instead of eating once in the morning, going without food during work, and “pigging out” in the evening. “It’s opened up a whole new life for me. I used to get tired just walking down the street. I’d stop and pretend to look in a shop window just to catch my breath.”

Carole, who has gone from a size 30 to a size 14 in the past 12 months, urged others struggling with obesity to be brave and take the first step. “If I can do it, anyone can.”