A SET of unflattering holiday snaps provided Ilkley sandwich shop assistant Kerrie McLaughlin with all the encouragement she needed to cut out the sarnies and shed those excess pounds.

The 25-year-old, of Railway Road, came back from a holiday in Zante in July 1999, feeling, as she describes it, like "a whale washed up on the beach".

"The holiday pictures really shocked me," says Kerrie, who weighed 12st 3lb. "How had this happened?"

Within days of her return, Kerrie joined a slimming group in Ilkley and set about losing over two stone.

Now, 18 months later and a svelte 10stone 1lb, she is also several steps closer to realising some of her other dreams.

"I was plodding through life before," says Kerrie, a team leader at the Ilkley Sandwich Co. "Now I have applied for a job with the civil service and am sitting my driving test soon. Losing weight has given me more confidence in lots of things."

Kerrie, who is 5ft 3in, says her college days were largely to blame for pushing her normally slim figure up to a size 14/16. "When I went to university a

combination of takeaways and six pints of lager four or five times a week saw my weight increase," she says.

"The sport facilities at college weren't good either so I was doing less exercise."

But beginning the Weight Watchers diet changed all that. "I started swimming twice a week and playing badminton," she says. "And I didn't find the diet that hard. It's more like a healthier eating plan - it's not a diet where you can't eat anything."

Thanks to the encouragement of her fellow slimmers, Kerrie managed to stick to her diet, despite being surrounded by food all day at work.

"I would advise people not to do it on their own," she admits. "It is a lot easier when you have people to talk to who know what you're going through."

Kerrie reached her target weight after a year of slimming but still attends meetings and bases her eating on the firm's plan.

"I've re-educated myself when it comes to food," she says. "And it's made me feel a lot better about myself."

But the best feeling of all? "Getting into a bikini on my holiday in Spain last year," says Kerrie. "That felt

fantastic!"

Sam Strangeways