My name is Chantal and like lots of women I put on weight (over 3 stone) during my first pregnancy and despite trying lots of different diets I never quite managed to lose it all again afterwards and...

My Dukan story...

As the years went by I put on more pounds, especially in winter and driven by a love of eating that I couldn't control.

With the menopause on the horizon and the extra pounds that come with it, I knew I had to do something really quickly.

What started me off was listening to a radio programme where one of the listeners was singing the praises of the DUKAN diet method.

When I got home, I did some research into this method and set about reading the book.

What appealed to me in it was the idea of eating "as much as you want" because with my previous diets I got really fed up with having to limit what you could eat.

• My favourite support Dukan food: Seafood sticks

• My Dukan treat: Spicy meat grilled on the plancha

• My favourite form of exercise: Running up the stairs at top speed

• The best compliment someone has paid me: "You are a beautiful woman"

• What keeps me going: my two children telling me off when I pretended to give in and want a "naughty treat"

• The advice I would give to other Dukanians: Don't worry about these ‘plateaux' we hear so much about when your weight won't shift and you start to have doubts, I have experienced them often enough, just stick carefully to the instructions and you'll see: we always win out in the end!

In the long term it isn't possible for me to keep cutting down on how much I eat. At the start of the year, just after the holidays, the scales were cruel: I had put on more weight!

This was what finally decided me! And I made up my mind to start following the instructions for this new method. The speed at which I lost weight me motivated me, all the more so because this method seemed so easy; weighing myself in the mornings became a real pleasure and made me feel so good that as the weeks went by I felt full of joy.

I hadn't been at my final weight of 9 stone for over 15 years. Recently one of my friends even said to me "I've never seen you so slim". Such sweet revenge in the battle against obesity.

However, I'm perfectly well aware that this battle still isn't over yet! I'm now in the consolidation phase and I'd like to thank Pierre Dukan's whole team here for all their advice and support which help us keep going for as long as it takes.