A Derbyshire mum has spent £32,500 on excess skin removal after losing 11 stone

Kate Richmond, 46, who was 26 stone at her heaviest, has undergone a remarkable transformation after embracing a fitness programme and taking up weight lifting.

But the ex-dentist, who now owns a medical aesthetics company, also underwent surgery to remove half a stone of skin - after shedding over a third of her body weight.

The single mum said she’d started piling on the pounds before her pregnancy, and later began binge eating after work when she’d put her son, Rocco, now 16, to bed.

She also faced cruel comments from men she dated, with one comparing her to an obese character in the film Shallow Hal who hypnotises her thinner boyfriend.

But Kate said she turned her life around when she was inspired by a friend to go on a 12-week online exercise programme and now weighs just 15 stone.

She now feels so confident she's taken part in a boudoir shoot, adding that several years ago she couldn't have “dreamed” she would look the way she does today.

Kate said about the shoot at For Your Eyes Only Portraits studio: “It was amazing. I burst into tears when I arrived, I was so scared.

"But it was brilliant. I still look at the photos and think, “Is that me?” It can’t be, I don’t look like that. I 100% didn’t dream I’d look like this. But I still see myself as a working progress.

She added: “The surgery was expensive, I can’t deny it. But I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, and I don’t want to go out, and I don’t have fast cars or a home that’s massive. I’d found it really, really hard to get this weight off, and I still wasn’t happy with how I looked. So as long as my family is not going without, I thought: ‘Why not treat myself a bit’."

Kate, who runs KR Aesthetics, in her home town of Heanor, Derbyshire, said she'd reached her heaviest in the lead-up to her pregnancy, just before her husband left her.

And in the years that followed, she developed an unhealthy eating pattern, where she would put off having food during the day but binge eat in the evening.

She said: “When I was working in dentistry, I wasn’t sitting in an office. I couldn’t eat in the surgery. And I was so busy, seeing 30 to 40 patients every day.

“I quite deliberately wouldn’t have lunch, and I would never have breakfast as I had to get Rocco ready for school, so I would only eat in the evening, and would wait and wait. At which point I felt, ‘Well, I’ve hardly eaten anything all day, so I’ll eat what I want’.

“It was comfort eating. It wasn’t eating because I was hungry, and that was one of the hardest things to deal with. On reflection, I was absolutely eating my emotions.”

Kate said she didn’t just find it hard to cut down on her calories but also deal with comments that came her way from men, and especially those she dated.

She said: “I had my first venture with internet dating. I met the guy and got on alright with him. He rang me up the following day and said I was much bigger than I looked in the pictures.

“He said I was a really nice person but he kind of likened it to Shallow Hall, like it was a shame that I was so unattractive.

“You always remember the bad things rather than the good things. They just cement themselves into your brain and you become really down on yourself.”

Kate turned a corner in 2019 when she joined a 12-week online exercise programme after seeing a friend, who was bigger than her, shed a lot of weight.

She built up her daily step count, first reaching 8,000 a day before hitting 12,000, and then joined a gym where she took up weightlifting, and she can now hip thrust 120kg.

Kate also took control of her eating patterns, particularly managing to cut down on the amounts of calories she was consuming.

But when Kate’s weight “plateaued”, she still wasn’t happy with the way she looked and realised it was because of her excess skin.

She said: “It wasn’t coming off any more and I got to the stage where I thought I couldn’t lose any more and thought I would be happy – but I wasn’t.

“I had this overhang on my stomach, and I couldn’t wear skirts or fitted dresses or you would see it. Then a friend said they were having a tummy tuck. I spoke to a surgeon, who said I was an ideal candidate.

"He said I could lose as much weight as I wanted, but it was going to make a difference as it wasn’t fat, it was skin.”

Kate has so far spent £32,500 on three operations to remove excess skin from her body, including one on her stomach and breasts that lasted nine hours.

And she now feels content with the way she looks, saying the surgery, though expensive, has massively improved her confidence.

She said: “I think I look okay. And for someone who has had cripplingly low self-esteem for 44 years, that’s okay. I can look at myself in the mirror now and not hate what I see.

“It’s hard to say, 'You have had to spend this much money; you have to look a certain way before you’re happy with yourself.' But for me, I feel happier. It’s helped me.”