LEANNE Andrews finally decided that enough was enough, when she saw the pictures of herself at her best friend's wedding.
"At 5ft 9, I could carry more weight than most people, without looking unhealthy, but I wasn't happy," says Leanne as she looks back at the pictures that inspired her to change her life.
"I had just had a baby, split up with my partner and I didn't have time to think about myself or eat properly. I was living on convenience foods," adds Leanne, who ballooned to 18½ stones and a size 26, before she decided to make her best New Years resolution yet ... to lose weight.
After the birth of her daughter Georgia, three, and the subsequent break-up of her relationship, Leanne, 26, was at an all-time low and had turned to "comfort-eating".
She joined her local slimming club, Slimming World, in Seaham, with best friend Mandy Sloan, 26, in January 2005 and in the last year, the pair have shed almost seven stones between them.
"It was when we saw Mandy's wedding photos that we both realised we needed to lose weight. We both needed a change, so we decided to do it together," says Leanne.
"I lost six pounds in the first week, which really spurred me on, and I have never looked back. Before, I used to get out of breath playing with Georgia, but now I have got loads of energy and I'm well on my way to my target weight of 11½ stone."
Both Leanne (who is now a healthy 13½ stone and a size 14-16) and Mandy found that the New Year gave them just the incentive they needed to drop the pounds.
Mandy, who was 14 stones and a size 18-20 before she started her New Year diet, is now a happier and healthier size 12-14.
"When I got my wedding pictures back, I knew I wanted to do something about my weight, so I decided to go along to Slimming World with Leanne in the New Year," says Mandy.
"It was great to have someone to go along with, I think it really helped us both out," adds Mandy as she prepares to celebrate 2006 almost two stones lighter.
"Chocolate was my big weakness before, but I have learnt to have everything in moderation and I feel much better for it. I think New Year gave me the incentive to make changes and I would encourage other people who want to get fit to do the same."
Both Leanne and Mandy found the Slimming World plan worked for them, but there are plenty of other diets on the market to help you towards a slim 2006.


* IF YOU'RE going cold turkey on last year's diet fads, there's a plethora of new ones on the market, from soup regimes to "Glycaemic Loading".
And the trend for the new inch-loss solutions is moving towards complete life changes rather than just what we eat.

The GL Diet
LAST year's GI has become this year's GL, which is likely to continue as one of the main diet trends for 2006.
Glycaemic Loading follows on from GI (Glycaemic Index), focusing on balancing blood sugar levels by mixing and matching carbs – and no calorie-counting.
This diet invites us to load our bodies with foods with low GIs, but allows us to continue eating a wide range of items.
Foods that had previously been considered high GI, such as melon, can now be introduced into your diet, as the amount of carbs you would eat in a portion, rather than the whole melon, is calculated, giving you a greater understanding of combining foods.

The Japanese Way
WE'VE a lot to learn from the Japanese – as celebrities including Victoria Beckham know all too well. Their women live longer than everyone else on Earth, only three per cent are obese compared with 23 per cent of English women, and most look younger than they are.
Japanese-born Naomi Moriyama reveals the secrets to enduring health, slim figures and anti-ageing appearance in Japanese Women Don't Get Old Or Fat, written with her husband, William Doyle.
She offers a wealth of secrets from her mother's Tokyo kitchen and shows you how you can create Japanese home-style cooking in your own home, with ingredients like fish, noodles and tofu, different types of rice, and seasonings such as rice vinegar, miso and soy sauce.
It's backed by expert opinions from scientists and doctors on the longevity and anti-obesity benefits of Japanese food.

The 24-Hour Diet
FITNESS guru Joanna Hall reckons you can lose up to four pounds in a day if you take up The 24-Hour Diet.
It's a diet for any emergency, whether it's fitting into that little black dress you bought a size too small or you want to lose weight after Christmas.
For the initial 24 hours, you are banned from eating carbs after 5pm and also have a specially selected choice of low-GI foods.
The 24-hour quick fix is followed by a small change you need to make each day for a 20-day period to help you change habits.
Day one simply starts with making sure you drink six glasses of water. On day two you must replace your sugary cereal and toast with either a bowl of porridge or unsweetened muesli.
Hall says that by day 20 you'll be living a really healthy, fit and slim way of life.

Curry Feast
IF YOU thought that you'd never eat a curry again when trying to lose weight, you're wrong.
Slimming World's Curry Feast book (Ebury, £15.99, published Jan 5) offers delicious recipes without worrying about what they might do to your waistline.
Encompassing dishes from India, Thailand and Malaysia, the book was compiled by renowned cookery writer Sunil Vijayakar and features slow-cooked lamb rogan josh, mild chicken korma and Goan prawn curry among the many mouth-watering dishes.

The Montignac Diet
IMAGINE a diet where you can drink red wine and eat cheese and chocolate. Well, apparently this is it.
The French have the lowest average body weight in the western world and yet they eat famously well, enjoying fine wines, cheese, chocolate and foie gras.
It all comes down to a uniquely French way of eating, revealed in The Montignac Diet, by Michel Montignac.
The GI-based plan features more than 50 mouth-watering recipes such as Gruyere Quiche, Salmon Provencale, Chocolate Cake and Raspberry and Chocolate Mousse.

Soup Diet
LAST year's dieters were big on cabbage soup. Now they're being invited to take up a more imaginative weight loss plan with The Big Healthy Soup Diet, by Linda Lazarides, founder of the British Association for Nutritional Therapy.
Her 10-day programme claims to enable you to lose up to 10 lbs, while her four-day detox can be used to kick-start body rebalancing and weight loss.
She also claims the diet can help conditions including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, lack of energy, low immunity and problems with hormones, bones, joints and skin.

Beat Cellulite
THE QUEEN of detox, Carol Vorderman, is now helping us get rid of our orange-peel thighs and bums with her Eat To Beat Cellulite Recipes with Anita Bean.
It follows on from The 30-Day Cellulite Plan and focuses on a nutritious superfood top 20 – from broccoli and beans to walnuts and mangoes – and shows how you can include them in your daily diet to help banish those unsightly lumps and bumps.

Weekend-Off Diet
DO YOU stick to your diet all week and ruin your good work at the weekend? Then The Weekend-Off Diet is the diet for you, devised by Helen Foster, a writer specialising in healthy, beauty and fitness.
She says you can diet Monday to Friday, then take the weekend off – and still lose weight.
With no banned foods, no hunger pangs and no need for guilty binge-eating, it offers varied meal plans and simple exercises to make healthy living a way of life.
Foster says you can lose 2kgs (5lbs) a week and still enjoy chocolate on Sunday!
Celebrity sex symbols who have reaped the benefit of this diet include silver screen sirens Renee Zellwegger and Sandra Bullock.


* Top 10 Tips to becoming a shadow of your former self

1. Drink water.
Dehydration, often mistaken for hunger, can lead to fatigue, slows the metabolism and can reduce our concentration and short-term memory. Drinking at least one or two litres of water each day will not only help fill you up but can ease joint pain, help your organs such as the kidney and liver work more efficiently and improve the condition of the skin (and help banish cellulite).

2. Believe in yourself.
How often have you admired someone and their achievements and then instantly thought "I would love to be able to do that, but I just couldn't"? We are all human and we all think like this on occasions. But don't limit your achievements by your thoughts. You can do whatever you want to do.

3. Identify reasons and occasions when you over-reat.
If you think about the places, times, people you are with when you eat, the occasions and reasons why you over-eat will become glaringly obvious. Think about it – is it at work, at home, at the weekends, at night, when you are with certain people, when you are alone?

4. Make gradual but permanent behaviour changes.
Not an instant step, but a very necessary and a very possible one. Gradually change the contents of your fridge to healthier products, steadily increase your fruit and vegetable portions, phase out those biscuits and treats and make smart food choices a part of your everyday life.

5. Reduce your portion sizes.
It is a fact that if we weigh too much we are eating too much. Sometimes we are eating very healthy foods, but we are eating too much of them. So it is vital that we become aware of how much we are eating and that we reduce it. Use a smaller plate, weigh food on your kitchen scales initially so that you know the weight of the everyday food items, use the same size of plate for meals so that you know how much food to put on it.

6. Write down why you want to lose weight.
This is the first and most important step. If you don't know why you want something, it won't be as important for you to get it.

7. Always eat breakfast.
Skipping breakfast sends a message to your body that you're "starving", because you haven't had food in a number of hours. As a protective mechanism, your metabolism slows down and tries to conserve energy – exactly the opposite of what you want to happen! Breakfast also gives your body the fuel it needs to exercise effectively.

8. Make exercise a regular habit.
Exercise is perhaps the secret weapon in successful and permanent weight loss. There is nothing with greater body benefits than exercise. We can start gently and build up gradually – a short walk is a fantastic way to begin or choose some other activity which you enjoy such as swimming, aerobics or playing tennis with a friend.

9. Tone your muscles with weight training.
Toned muscles really boost your metabolism and cause your body to burn calories faster – yes, even while you're sleeping, you'll be burning more calories!

10. Look for situations to be active.
Park as far from the shopping centre as you can, rather than looking for the closest parking spot. Use the stairs rather than the lift or escalator, do more jobs around the house yourself, like washing the windows or the car or mowing the lawn. Look for the "difficult" way to do things – the way that requires the most effort!