From overweight TO OVERHEAD!

One couple share their journey from loafing on the sofa to swinging from a circus trapeze

- TRACY GAYTON

Watching their grandchildren playing in their back garden, Becki and Martin Keightley remember a time when that moment would have left them feeling sad. 'The children had so much energy, but we couldn't keep up with them as we wanted to,' recalls Becki, 49, a grandmother of eight.

'Both of us were very overweight and always short of breath. Even a simple game of football was out of the question. We'd struggled with our weight for years, but it hit us that we didn't want to be remembered by our grandkids as fat Grandma and fat Grandpa.'

So, in 2021, the couple decided it was finally time for them to do something about it.

The couple live in Polegate, East Sussex. Becki works in a nursery. She and Martin, 55, met 15 years ago, when they worked at the same hotel. Back then, Becki was a single mum of three with a job as head housekeeper, and Martin was head chef.

They married in 2014 and had two sons together, but while their family grew, there was one thing holding them back. 'As far back as I can remember, I've always been overweight,' Becki says. 'In more recent years, it made me lethargic and I found it difficult to walk upstairs.

'At my biggest, I weighed 19st and was a dress size 26. Martin never minded about the excess weight I was carrying - as long as I was happy, he was happy. But over time, our shared bad habits of dishing up massive portions and eating too many takeaways made him pile on the pounds too.'