‘I was eating myself to death... NOW I'VE LOST 60kg!

Despite dropping half her bodyweight, Christchurch mum Katie shares why she still won’t wear a bikini

- Morgan Reardon

When Katie Jones uploaded photos of her 30th birthday to Facebook, she captioned the images “Thirty, flirty and thriving”, yet behind her big smile, she was hiding a deadly secret from those she loved most.

Back in August 2020, the Christchurch mum was in the battle of her life with an eating disorder and no one, not even her husband Gary, knew the dark depths her illness was taking her to.

Katie’s struggle with food started when she was just five years old, but it was in her late teens that she began yo-yo dieting, bouncing from hardcore exercise and starvation, to binge eating and back again.

After the birth of her two sons, Weston, now five, and Theo, four, she ballooned to 126kg – her heaviest weight ever. “I was so ashamed of myself,” Katie, 31, confesses to Woman’s Day.

Her binge-eating disorder – only formally recognised as a mental disorder in 2013 – saw her making multiple daily trips to McDonald’s, hiding food wrappers in her baby’s dirty nappies and eating her kids’ lunchbox snacks.

“When I’d host a mother’s group at my house, everyone would bring a dish and I’d finish offthe scraps on people’s plates when they left,” admits Katie, who realised she had to reach out for help just weeks after emerging from her 30th birthday sugar coma.