Ana Sirbu's lost 19 stone after working night shifts in a takeaway - leaving her struggling to breathe and unable to leave the house
A pizza chef shed a staggering 19 stone in year after fearing her weight would cause her to die in her sleep.
Ana Sirbu's weight reached 32 stone after she piled the pounds while working night shifts in a takeaway.
It got to the stage where the 28-year-old was unable to leave the house and was struggling to breathe, with her boyfriend having to wake her to check she was breathing in the night.
After reaching breaking point, Ana started a diet which led to her dramatic weight loss.
Ana, from York, said: "My weight affected everything in my life. I couldn't do the housework; I couldn't even walk to the corner shop to buy a loaf of bread.
"I even got turned down for a job because of my size - the manager telling me that they couldn't have anyone working in their kitchen as big as me.
"Although I knew that I needed to do something about my weight for some time, the turning point was definitely a fear for my health. I was so depressed and exhausted, I got to the point where I couldn't even leave the house.
At 32 stone, I struggled to sleep, so much so that my boyfriend would have to wake up in the middle of the night just to check that I was still alive.
"It was a really scary time for everyone."
Despite her enormous weight Ana was determined to shed her weight naturally without asking for weight loss surgery.
She began to struggle with her weight after leaving her home country of Romania and she said working 12 hour night shifts left her very stressed and drove her to eat.
She said she "simply ate the wrong things at the wrong time", eating as she worked at night time and having pizza at 5am in the morning.
She lost the weight after joining the LighterLife Weight Management programme which saw her eat four specially formulated food packs per day, alongside weekly counselling sessions.
It saw her drop 18 stone in 12 months and then last year she lost a final stone through healthy eating. Ana said her father wept when he saw her on her return to Romania.
"The time before last that I saw my father I promised him that the next time he would see me that I would be a completely different person and I didn't let him down,"she said.
"When I saw him last year after I had lost the weight - he just started crying. I was still his daughter, but a million times happier and healthier.
"Before I lost the weight I felt trapped in my own body - I couldn't be myself as I couldn't move or do anything I wanted to do. But now I feel free. I go jogging every day which I absolutely love, I can't believe that I struggled to even walk around my house before. I go bike riding and I absolutely love to dance."
Sally Duffin, a nutritional therapist , said she would usually advise people to lose one to two pounds a week for their weight loss to be sustainable and to allow the metabolism to adjust.
Losing a lot of weight can put the body into shock and pressure on the heart and digestive system.
But she added: "The positive thing for this lady was that she was able to deal with the mind set of why she was overeating."
Ana before Weight: 32 stone Dress size: 26, although sometimes struggled to find clothes which fitted at all.
Daily diet: Start of the evening - eggs and cheese, 8pm - pizza or fried chicken and chips or chips and cheese, 5am - pizza and whatever was left in the takeaway at the end of the night.
Ana after Weight: 13 stone Dress size: 12/14.
Daily diet: Breakfast - hummus and slices of cucumber, radish and pepper or a salad wrap, lunch - chicken or fish and salad, evening meal - boiled rice and vegetables or couscous.
