An Allington mum dropped a whopping seven dress sizes in 17 months after discovering her weight had led to her daughter being bullied.

Vanessa McNeil tipped the scales at 19-and-a-half stones when she learned 11-year-old Hannah was being taunted in the playground, enduring cruel jibes about her mother.

The 47-year-old said: “One day she came home really quiet and withdrawn.

“She said she didn’t want to tell me what was wrong because she didn’t want to hurt me and eventually explained someone at school had said some awful things about me.

“She was crying when she told me and I was crying hearing it.

“It turned out she was having friendship issues because people were picking on her because of my size.

"She is my world and I decided I wasn’t doing this to her anymore" - Vanessa McNeil

“She is my world and I decided I wasn’t doing this to her anymore.”

Mrs McNeil, a childminder, weighed nine stone when she got married 26 years ago. But she soon found herself with several jobs to make ends meet, drinking up to four litres of diet coke instead of meals in the day and then turning to unhealthy convenience food in the evening.

She had become a size 26 by the time she joined Slimming World in March last year.

Since then, by changing her diet and taking up walking and gym classes, she has shed more than eight stone and is now a size 12.

The dramatic change meant she was able to carry out a lifelong ambition in June, finally being under the weight limit for a skydive.

But she says it is little things, like being able to go on a see-saw with Hannah, now a pupil at Maplesden Noakes, that have made it all worthwhile.

Mrs McNeil said: “She’s never had an active mum but now we can do all these things together.

“When Hannah started at secondary school she had to write about something she was proud about and she wrote about me. ”