Hucknall weight loss group celebrates 300lb lost with £300 gain for the food bank

Your Time has a session each week at the John Godber Centre and another at St John’s Community Centre.

Founder Theresa Gandy decided to start up the group after several of her friends said they were interested in supporting each other together at local weekly sessions.

And it’s working well as between the two groups, members have lost 300lb since it started last year.

Theresa said: "Your Time is community interest, non-profit company and all the proceeds from the sessions go towards helping the food bank.

"We’ve only been going since September though so we’re not in profit yet, but we wanted to help the food bank anyway.

"So we’ve been having monthly raffles at the sessions and the ladies have all donated prizes and bought tickets for.”

Theresa also got support from her daughter Lisa who took on an epic walking challenge earlier this year to also raise funds for the food bank.

Theresa said: “She wanted to do 150 miles in February and she actually ended up doing 187.

"With those two events, the raffle and Lisa’s walk, we’ve managed to raise £300 which we’ve donated to the food bank.

"We wanted to still support them in any way we could with it being so hard for people right now.

"I spoke to Yvonne Campbell (food bank manager) the other day and she said she’d had eight new families come just that morning.

"The ladies and myself, we’re not wealthy women but we’re not at the food bank level either so we wanted to donate items and funds to help.

“I have a tub at the groups each week with a list of what the food bank most needs and the ladies donate what they can and then periodically, I’ll take that down to the food bank when we’ve got a few bagfuls.

"It just keeps that sense of community going.

"Your Time, is more than a weight loss group, it’s all about breaking the dieting cycle and about changing the narrative and mindset to eat more healthily and live a healthier lifestyle, rather than being scales orientated.”