New Ros emerging as battle is won

Five years ago she weighed 142kg. Today, she's 97kg. Carly Udy catches up with a Bay woman who has made an amazing transformation.
Five years ago the Te Puke mother weighed 142kg and was one of four New Zealanders who took part in the Greenstone Pictures documentary Big, which re-screened on Prime TV last Tuesday night.
Half a decade later, Ros feels a new person after shedding 45kg.
"At my heaviest I weighed 147kg and that was just from pure anxiety before the documentary came out," Ros explains.
So popular was the story of Ros, Miranda Gray-Taufa, Sharon Bishop and Gordon Walker, it was the highest rating programme on TV the night it aired in 2000.
Producers from Greenstone Pictures approached Ros after she had been turned down for a Change Your Life reality show, asking her to take part in a documentary on obese people. At the time Ros had tried every diet imaginable and had a serious problem with binge eating.
"It's just like an alcoholic having a drink, a sex addict going out and finding sex, a drug addict having a fix ... it's a addiction. It's like I'm possessed, I don't think about what I'm doing or how I feel," Ros said at the time.
A turning point for her came during filming of the documentary when she saw her own son Ryan reach for chocolate after losing a BMX race.
"Any other kid would cry - he went straight to the chilly bin and got chocolate. I've tried really hard over the years not to inflict it on him but I have," she said during filming.
Five years on, Ros' life couldn't be more different.
"I didn't start losing weight until 2001. After the doco there was public pressure to see us perform but I thought, 'I'll do it on my own time'.
"It's a mental thing, it's won or lost in the head. Unless your thought pattern is right no one will succeed at it."
Ros suffered years of depression before learning how to recognise and deal with her emotions.
"There's a certain point of denial. It's like an anorexic thinking he or she's fat. I never thought I was as big as I was.
"When I weighed 147kg I saw myself as the weight I am now."
"(After the doco) I started thinking 'why am I eating this?', I changed my job, Ryan gave up BMX, we changed our lives around.
"I took self responsibility - only I could do it for me. I gave up waiting for someone to do it for me or for some event to come along and make me feel better."
"I was 34 at the time and gave myself until I was 40 to do it. I took it one day at a time, one week at a time ... I had to change the food and start exercising.
"I lost 40kg before even going to the gym, just by going walking each day and building on that."
A combination of six different diets also helped.
"I had to figure out what I could live on for the rest of my life and I found little bits of each thing worked. I lost 25-30 kgs before someone said 'you've lost weight'. An average person would only have to lose a couple of kgs for someone to notice." Ros hopes to get close to her goal weight of 60-65kg this year.
"If I'd been perfect for the last three to four years I would have been at my goal weight 18 months ago."
Christmas and New Year can be a problem and saw her put 8kg back on. While she's disappointed in herself, she also recognises how far she's come.
"I couldn't have done it without support from my friends, family and Ryan - he's been one in a million.
"I've stopped listening to what's in the media and the debate around what (overweight people) should be doing - I'm thinking for myself."