Woman loses 15st after ditching tinned fruit habit: 'I’d wake up choking because my neck was so big'
Lucy Austen achieved her desired weight loss by swapping the nine tins of fruit she ate a day for stir fries and curries.
A woman who spent over £3,200 a year eating up to nine cans of tinned fruit per day has kicked the habit and seen a 15st weight loss.
Lucy Austen, 37, started comfort eating during lockdown and reached her highest weight of 29st 7lbs.
Austen, from Cambridge, began eating four £1 tubs of ice cream per day, before switching to tinned fruit.
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"At one point I was eating three to four tubs of ice cream a day. Then I got bored of ice cream and started on tinned fruit," she explains.
"I ate nine tins a day. I went to sleep with pillows behind me and I’d wake up choking because my neck was so big. I was giving myself liver damage."
Austen, who works in admin for the NHS, was diagnosed with diabetes in March 2021, which saw her vomiting ‘a lot’. Yet, it wasn’t until April 2022 when she was told she would need to take insulin as her blood sugars were co high that she decided to ditch the sugary habit.
"I gradually cut down on snacks," she says. "I couldn’t walk to begin with, so I forced myself to go swimming. I couldn’t even get out of the pool."
After losing 9st, Austen began taking up cycling and running and continues to do a combination of the two up to three times per week.
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She also began drinking more water and swapped the tinned fruit - which she would often eat for dinner - for stir fries and curries.
In total, Austen has lost 15st 3lbs and now weighs 14st 4lbs. She says her weight loss allowed her to feel confident in her figure when taking her 13-year-old daughter on holiday.
"I couldn’t get up from the sofa before. Now I have energy,” Austen adds. “My daughter deserves it."
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How bad for you is tinned fruit?
Tinned fruit is often high in sugar. A large-scale study from 2015 found that people who eat tinned fruit two to three times per week were more likely to die young than those who ate tinned fruit just once a month.
To get the fibre and nutrients from fruit, it’s best to eat fresh or frozen fruit, or tinned fruit in water or juice that’s been drained before consumption.
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