Weight-loss nightmare 'MY EXCESS SKIN IS MAKING ME SICK!'

This Waikato mum lost 85kg, but she still doesn't love her body

It was a single question from a toddler that spurred Christie McGregor to change the course of her life. While picking up her son Myles, now six, from daycare in 2018, one of his classmates pointed at her and asked, "Why are you so fat?"

The question felt like a gut-punch to Christie, 29, who had ballooned to 160kg after suffering a devastating miscarriage and a life-long battle with endometriosis. Breaking down in a flood of tears, she returned to her Tīrau home and told her husband Gage she was going to book herself in for gastric sleeve surgery.

"I couldn't live like that any more," Christie tells Woman's Day. “I could handle the cruel comments about my weight as I'd been bullied about it since school, but now it was affecting my son and I couldn't let that happen."

Struggling with her weight since she hit puberty, Christie - who is just 1.56m tall - had always turned to food as a source of comfort. "When people would comment about my weight, I'd buy a pie and eat it in front of them." she says.

"If I broke a chair, I'd laugh it off. I felt that if I made the joke first, no one else could."

The software specialist begged doctors to book her in for surgery within the public system, but she was denied several times. "Even though I couldn't even wipe my own bottom or bend to put on my shoes, I was still considered a 'healthy fat person' because I didn't have high blood pressure or cholesterol issues."