The mother: 'The wrong food is everywhere'

Karen Beach, 36, from Hertfordshire

The mother-of-three was 17 stone and had "tried every single diet" when last year she paid almost £5,000 for gastric surgery. She lost six stone and is now a size 12.

"I was aware that my weight had health implications and it was desperation that made me have surgery. But it's only too easy to slip back into bad habits and I have to work bloody hard to keep it off. Gastric surgery is no quick fix.

"The issue is that the wrong food is everywhere. The supermarkets bombard you with rubbish, go into the petrol station and there's sweets – even the post office is full of chocolate. The shops will deliver unhealthy foods to your door.

"I have shops about 10 minutes away from me and have to admit I have never once walked there. I jump in the car. At the same time, women are being told size 8 is the only attractive size to be. No wonder people are in a state about weight."

The teenager: 'I've been bullied by other girls'

Alice, 14, from Tyneside

The schoolgirl has been overweight since she was a toddler. Her father died of heart disease when she was a baby.

"I can't tell you what I weigh now, because my mum threw out the bathroom scales. I cried all the time when I weighed myself and hadn't lost anything. She gets strict sometimes about what I eat, but other times she says it's down to me to use willpower.

"I don't really eat sweets. I eat fruit, but I do like toast and breakfast cereals. My mum isn't fat and she shops in Karen Millen, but they don't have clothes that fit me. Once I went into Topshop, but I felt everyone staring – I was going to buy a necklace but even that didn't fit!

"I won't buy anything over a size 16, but I am probably a size 18. I don't know if I was bullied because I was big or I ate more because I was being bullied. It feels like I have been hated by other girls all my life. I would like to lose weight, but sometimes I think I will be stuck like this for ever."