Family happy to lose out in the battle of the bulge

"We weren't really," she now admits. "We were just fat and used to eat too much and the wrong things."

But it took a test which revealed she had high blood pressure to convince Yvonne it was time to take drastic action.

"I have four children, and, each time, my weight crept up. I worked full time and we ate all the wrong things; take-aways,fast food andchips. It was all I had time to do. I did try to go to the gym but it didn't seem to do anything. I had tried things in the past but most of them were too complicated. But getting high blood pressure made be realise enough was enough and I had to do something about my weight."

Yvonne and one of her daughters, Sian, 22,decided to join the local Weight Watchers club. At that stage, Yvonne weighed more than 16 stone and Sian more than 17.

"It was a bit of safety in numbers as it can be a bit daunting walking in to your first session. But Jill, the leader of our session, was fantastic. She would always be so encouraging and never told us off when we slipped a bit. I also found the points system really easy to follow. You can see really easily what foods you should be avoiding. It completely changed the things we were eating."

Within 18 months, Yvonne lost 4.5 stone and Sian, a teacher in Rotherham,an amazing 7.5 stone – dropping down from a size 20 to a size 10. She has also changed her lifestyle, now going to the gym three times a week and swapping chips and chocolate for healthy options.

"I feel so much more confident," says Sian. "I used to walk through a crowd with my head down, and never wear high heels. Now I wear high heels all the time. I never used to be able to go shopping with my friends to normal shops and now I go shopping all the time. It has made such a difference to my life."

"It has made such a difference to us," adds Yvonne. "Our confidence is so much better. We no longer have to wear baggy t-shirts and it is so nice to be able to shop in ordinary shops."

Inspired by her daughter and granddaughter, Yvonne's mum, Sylvia Logan, decided to get in on the action, joining the same Weight Watchers club in 2009, and has since lost a 2st 2lbs.

The following month, Francesca, Yvonne's youngest daughter, decided to join. As she was only 14, Francesca had to have a doctor's note giving her clearance to join the club.

"We were very careful with Francesca as we didn't want to make her obsessed about her weight. She was 14 and weighed 14 stone so we did need to do something, but we wanted her to take it slowly."

Francesca lost more than one-and-a-half stone.

Karen Miller-Kovach, Weight Watchers' chief scientific officer, believes that flexibility is one of the reasons the diet programme has remained so successful over the year.

"We want people to go on the programme, hit their target weight and then leave but still follow the lifestyle changes that being on the programme brought," explains Karen.

"If there is someone who has been on the programme religiously for years, then we have failed. The idea is that we are there if they need us."

Karen said that over the years, Weight Watchers had been forced to change with advances in knowledge about nutrition and the way the body processes food.

"The main ethos behind the diet was always calories in versus calories out, and although that is still right we now know that the science behind how we use food in our bodies is much more complex than that.

"We have developed the ProPoints programme, which takes into account our ever increasing knowledge about how the body processes food. We have learnt more in the last 10n years than we did in the previous 90."

She believes that changes in out lifestyles and eating habits are the main reasons behind the obesity crisis.

MAKING A POINT OF DIETING

Weight Watchers new ProPoints were launched in November and although they work similar to the old points-based system, the food values have changed.

"We know that some foods are better at making us feel fuller longer and are processed slowly by the body," says Karen Miller Kovatch. "The benefit of the ProPoints system is that people can be flexible and that often means they find the diet easier to stick to."

For more information, call 08457 123 000 or visit www.weightwatchers.co.uk