The 13st girl whose weight loss treatment cost you £12,000

Although she knew her daughter was overweight, Beverley Deakin was not prepared for the number on the scales when she finally took her to her GP.

At just 12 years of age, and barely out of primary school, Destiny tipped the scales at a whopping 13st, and was clinically obese.

‘It was an enormous shock,’ Beverley, 42, admits. ‘I could see Destiny had got a bit big, but I assumed it was puppy fat, and that it would even itself out, eventually.’

As anyone who has tried to drop pounds will know, excess weight does not ‘even itself out’ but requires a huge amount of effort — or in the case of Destiny, an enormous amount of cash.

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Beverley Deakin, right, and her daughter Destiny, left, aged 11 when she weighed a ‘clinically obese’ 13st 

Pictured with Beverley at home in Yorkshire, Destiny, right, is now at a healthy 11st and attends the gym

For Destiny, who, by her own admission, gorged on enormous amounts of junk food, did not just embark on a rigid plan of healthy eating imposed by her mother, but enrolled at a ‘fat camp’, at a cost to the taxpayer of £6,000.

And when she failed to maintain the weight loss she achieved there, she went back a year later — making the total bill to the public purse £12,000.

Today, at 15, Destiny from Rotherham, South Yorkshire, is a striking size 12-14 and a healthy 11st, goes to the gym, eats a balanced diet and snacks on fruit salad. 

A sensible, warm-hearted girl, she plans to study sports science at university so she can help other adolescents and says she feels appalled by memories of her old self.

‘Now I can go to the shops with my friends and watch them buying sweets or crisps and fizzy pop and I think, “If you had a clue what you were eating, you would be horrified”,’ she says.

And while there can be no denying the success of her public-funded treatment, lingering questions remain about why such basic nurturing skills as feeding a child should fall to the state.

Why couldn’t Destiny’s family — including dad Stuart, who lives nearby after splitting from her mum several years ago — control her diet?

Raised with brother Macauley, 20, Destiny was a slender outdoorsy child until she was eight, when her maternal grandfather George became ill with cancer and she began to comfort-eat to cope.

She sought solace in junk food and takeaways: toast for breakfast, a bottle of sugary cola and a bag of crisps on the way to school, a bacon sandwich at lunchtime and pizzas for dinner, supplemented by chocolate bars and treats.

This was compounded, Beverley says, by the fact that Destiny often visited her maternal grandmother Joyce’s house after school as Beverley was working long hours at three jobs.

Beverley said Destiny, left with her mother at a 2015 wedding and right in the present day, was a slender child until age eight, when her grandfather developed cancer and she comfort-ate to cope

‘Her gran hasn’t got a clue about healthy food. All the things she cooks regularly are unhealthy — fried food, chip-pan chips in fat — and Destiny was having that every night after school,’ explains Beverley.

‘The problem is that her gran can eat what she likes and can stay a size 6.’

Not so Destiny, whose weight was piling on. At nine she was so self-conscious she refused at school to remove a zipped-up jacket on a scorching day because ‘I would rather be too hot than show my tummy’.

And while Beverley admits she had noticed her daughter was getting bigger, she says she felt it best not to draw attention to it. ‘I talked to my mum and she said it was puppy fat, that Destiny was going to be tall and it would even out,’ she says.

Beverley is slightly overweight herself, a size 16 and prone to fluctuating by a couple of stone.

‘It has never made me unhappy — the way I see it is it’s just me,’ she says. ‘I could diet and do more exercise, but I’m healthy, so I’m not worried. If I had a special occasion, I could easily drop a dress size.’

Destiny was twice sent to a £6,000 weight loss camp to shed her excess weight and their south Yorkshire council agreed to foot the bill (file picture)

Yet persuading her daughter to ditch the junk would have been a far harder task, she insists.

‘People think you can lose weight by simply stopping eating junk food and doing more exercise, but with a teenager who has been struggling with her weight for a long time it is far more complicated,’ she says.

In fact, Destiny says her mum ‘didn’t have a clue’ about what she was putting away every day.

‘Mum gave me spending money to go shopping with as did my dad, but I would spend it on food,’ she says.

‘When I ate it took everything away, all the confusing, upsetting feelings I had inside.’

Her burgeoning size also made her the target of bullies — which in turn drove her to eat more. 

‘There were two boys who were really horrible. They used to call me “burger girl” and that they hoped I would die,’ she recalls. 

‘I thought, “Well, if they’re calling me fat then I might as well just eat as it makes no difference.” 

‘I hated myself, but I couldn’t stop it. I knew I was getting massive, I could feel it. I started to isolate myself, sitting in my bedroom night after night.’

Surely this alone, aside from her daughter’s palpable weight gain, should have prompted Beverley to start asking searching questions?

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‘It wasn’t talked about on TV like it is now,’ Beverley insists. ‘I don’t think we were aware of the health implications. 

‘I took her to the doctor several times on unrelated issues and he never said a word about her weight while we were there.’

Instead, matters were only brought to a head when a staff member at Destiny’s school called Beverley to talk about the bullying.

‘I felt my life had collapsed at that point,’ she says. ‘I felt so helpless, that I had let my daughter down very badly. 

‘I realised her weight was a problem we had to start dealing with and I booked an appointment with the GP immediately.’

When her daughter stood on the scales and 13st flashed up, Destiny was horrified. ‘I wouldn’t let my mum see the scales,’ she says. ‘I didn’t want to face it.’

The GP referred Destiny to a 12-week, council-provided course at a local leisure centre, comprising of two-hour weekly meetings, exercise and classes on healthier eating. Beverley was expected to go with her.

It seems to have been a wake-up call — initially. Out went sunflower oil, in came ‘one cal’ low-calorie oil, out went sugary cereals and in came fruit and fibre, while chicken wraps replaced Destiny’s lunchtime pizza. But Destiny could not maintain her new habits. 

‘One session a week wasn’t enough,’ she says. ‘I started to lapse as I didn’t have the willpower.’

More sessions followed at a NHS weight-management centre, then a doctor recommended Destiny contact MoreLife, a weight loss camp for overweight children held each summer in Leeds.

At £6,000 a time, however, Beverley couldn’t afford it, so her local council agreed to foot the bill after a referral. On July 26, 2013, a week shy of her 13th birthday, Destiny arrived at the camp.

Was her mother embarrassed that public money had to be used?

‘How could I feel guilty for wanting to improve my daughter’s future?’ she says. 

‘We needed something more drastic. People think there is just one pot of money and that if this money goes to someone like Destiny then it is being taken away from someone else, but it’s more complicated than that.’

Her daughter joined 60 other obese children aged nine to 17 at the camp. ‘I really didn’t want to go,’ she admits. ‘It felt like going into prison. You knew you weren’t going to see your family for weeks.’

And Beverley says: ‘I felt terrible walking away and leaving my daughter there. She seemed so young.’

But Destiny settled in almost instantly. ‘It wasn’t like a boot camp,’ she says. 

‘We did exercise and had sessions helping us understand why we ate and what it did, but they were really understanding. 

‘They never mentioned the world fat. They said you weren’t there to lose weight, but to get healthy and fit.’

Destiny’s 1,800 calories-a-day diet, combined with exercise, meant that when she walked out the gates six weeks after she arrived, she was 1st 1 lb lighter — not a dramatic loss, but a good starting point.

But it didn’t take long before she started to slip back into old habits.

‘I really did try, but I didn’t have the support network of the camp and it was really hard when my friends were eating bad stuff not to join in, especially as they didn’t have particularly healthy options at school,’ she says. 

‘I would say to myself “just this once”, then before I knew it the weight was creeping on again.’

Her mother says she tried to control her daughter’s intake but that it was impossible to monitor her 24/7.

By Christmas, Destiny had gained half a stone. ‘I started the New Year of 2014 with a resolution to eat healthily again, but by spring I knew I needed to go back to the camp,’ says Destiny. 

‘I rang them to ask if they were any places and they initially said I couldn’t go twice, especially as it hadn’t worked the first time. ‘

But with more funding from her council, Destiny was admitted weighing 12½st. And this time she was more motivated. ‘I was a year older, and I knew this was my last chance. I was determined,’ she says.

Destiny lost another stone at the camp and a further half stone has gone since, all of which she has kept off.

She will, her mother acknowledges, never be ‘a skinny minny’ as she has a solid frame, but the weight loss has transformed her life — she exercises regularly and is determined to pass her exams. ‘She is a confident, happy girl,’ says Beverley.

And as far as Destiny is concerned, that more than justifies the public expenditure.

‘Yes, it’s a lot of money, but it will cost the NHS a lot less than a lifetime of obesity. You have to look at the bigger picture.’