EXCLUSIVE: The mum of Britain’s biggest family, Sue Radford, tells the Mirror about her health transformation and whether she’s ready to welcome a 23rd baby into the mix alongside her 14 grandchildren
Sue Radford has revealed her closely-guarded secret to losing three stone after being hit with accusations she’s been using weight loss jabs.
Mum Sue, 51, has worked hard to shed the pounds after the birth of her 22nd baby in 2020. But is she ready again to welcome a 23rd baby into Britain’s biggest family?
“No, definitely not now,” Sue, from Morecambe, Lancashire, tells the Mirror. “We’re definitely enjoying the kids getting older and it’s lovely being grandparents. We were thinking about this at the weekend because it’s so lovely having children and grandchildren of similar ages as well and watching them grow up in the bonds that they have.”
Sue and husband Noel have been married for 34 years and were 14 and 18 when they welcomed their first child Christopher. Sue was 13 years old when she first became pregnant, while Noel was 17. They now have 14 grandchildren.
The couple are back on TV for a new series of their Channel 5 show, 22 Kids and Counting, which showed Sue knuckling down as she underwent a health and fitness transformation.
Sue decided to start her healthy eating journey when she turned 50, which she said was a “turning point” for her. “It was looking back on my holiday pictures and seeing how big I got,” she says. “I got to a point where I didn’t even want to have pictures taken with the kids and things like that because I just didn’t like looking at them.
“So that for me was a point where I thought ‘I can’t carry on like this’. I have to do something about it. And not only that, but the health side of it as well. You want to be around for your kids as long as you possibly can, be as healthy as you can be for them. Doing it has been really good for the family as well because we eat more healthily, and we just do better now because we’re not eating junk food.”
Sue says she feels “much happier” in herself since she became healthier. “I just feel really, really good now, and I’m so glad that I stuck with it,” she says. It’s definitely hard work, but if it’s something you want to do, you have to change your eating habits, which takes a lot of willpower. I think after a few months of doing that, I definitely was not bothered about eating chocolate, fizzy pop, or cutting out sugar. So yeah, I definitely feel much better for doing it.”
However, despite feeling positive in herself, she was hit with a wave of negativity after posting a photo of herself online after the weight loss. One particularly bitter comment referred to Sue as “mutton dressed as lamb”.
But Sue brushes off the comments. “I think that comes with the territory, doesn’t it?” she says. “And you do have to expect that not everybody’s going to be there cheering you on. I think you are going to get people who aren’t so nice, and you just have to brush it off. Because, for me my confidence is definitely there now, and I feel confident enough to post pictures like that. I’m not bothered what other people think now. It doesn’t matter.”
Noel is “really proud” of Sue and insists she hasn’t been using weight loss jabs. “Nobody ever believes you can just do it by you know dieting and keeping healthy and a bit more exercise, do they? Everyone thinks, oh, you must be cheating,” he says. “But I’m really proud of her. It’s been hard work for her, especially at the beginning.”
Opening up about how she lost the weight, which Sue said she’d keep quiet about in their TV show 22 Kids and Counting, she says: “I think [how I lost the weight is] more about the healthy eating side of it. I did take Berberine, which I do still actually take now, along with going to the gym and things like that.”
Sue adds: “I definitely feel proud of myself for doing it. I’m so glad that I gave myself a kick up the a*** and got on with it because otherwise, I don’t think I would have been confident, and I wouldn’t want pictures taken with the kids. So for me, it was just something I needed to do.”
*22 Kids and Counting airs Sundays at 8pm on Channel 5
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