A young woman is celebrating shedding more than 13 stone after a lifelong battle with her weight.

Emily Case, of Trunley Way, Hawkinge, has dropped from a dress size 28 to a size 10.

She says that she had been a big baby and was conscious of her size from a very early age.

The 22-year-old said: “I first went on a diet at the age of eight after stepping on the scales at my grandmother’s house and being shocked that I weighed eight and a half stone.”

Despite a healthy home diet and school lunchboxes typically containing cold meat and vegetable sticks, Emily continued to put on the pounds.

Doctors later discovered that she had an underactive thyroid, a condition that runs in her family, leaving her prone to gain excess weight.

But cruel comments made to her as a child led Emily to take solace in food and she also began to ‘comfort eat’ as a teenager to cope with exam stresses.

Determined to rid herself of the excess pounds Emily tried the usual routes. She said: “I went to Slimming World, Weight Watchers, and tried the Atkins diet, but every time I fell off the wagon I ended up putting it back on. I was just yo-yo dieting.”

At one point, Emily was so upset after seeing unflattering pictures of herself at a wedding reception that she went on to lose three stone, aided by medication for her under active thyroid.

It was after this the trainee mortgage adviser decided that she couldn’t take the risk of regaining the weight and that surgery was her only option.

Emily, who weighed more than 23 stone at her heaviest, said: “I had been offered a gastric band by my GP when I was 16 but I turned it down, thinking I could go it alone.

“This time I felt ready to accept help and make the necessary lifestyle changes.”

In June last year Emily, a former pupil at St Edmund’s School, Dover, had a gastric bypass when surgeons sectioned off a small part of her stomach, connecting it to the small intestine, meaning she needs less food to feel full and that she absorbs fewer calories from it.

Since then Emily has adopted a healthy lifestyle, including taking up running.

She treated herself to a photoshoot at Style Photography in Herne Bay to celebrate her new look and said: “I feel like a different person and have my self-confidence back.

“I can dress for my body and I no longer have to hide it.”