I couldn’t afford a gym membership so I started working out with my kids as weights – and now I’ve lost 7lbs.

A mum-of-two has shared the secrets to her weight loss success after shedding a whopping 7 stone by ditching her 5,000 calorie diet and including her kids in her home exercise routine.

Cassie Morrison, 26, from Hull, made a sustained effort to shed the pounds by replacing her unhealthy diet with lean protein and getting her young children involved in a range of exercises including squats, shoulder presses, planks and arm curls.

Through a combination of raising children and eating healthy, Cassie dropped from 17 to 10 stone over a two-year period– and she is now a size 10.

Cassie, who saved around £1,000 on a gym membership, said: “Exercising with the kids has helped me a lot. I could never afford real weights, but I really wanted to put in the effort and lose the weight, so using my kids was the next best thing. I’ve always done that.’

The mother of two has struggled with her weight all her life and explained that she has always been larger than average.

Although she said her meal plan wasn’t particularly bad, she would still consume about 5,000 snacks and fast foods each day.

But when she hit a size 26, she couldn’t bear to look at herself in the mirror.

After going on vacation and not even being able to take a photo without feeling embarrassed, she decided enough was enough.

The mother of two started her weight loss journey with no money for a gym, so she decided to get creative with her workouts.

Her children, Ruby, two, and Broden, four, have been essential to her incredible weight-loss and muscle-building journey.

As she progressed, Cassie was able to increase her exercises, with five-minute sessions on each part of the body, and set up a pole in her garage to teach herself to work with a stick.

The 26-year-old managed to get down to a size 10 and hopes to squeeze into a smaller size soon.

She said: “My children love that I involve them in training. They love joining in, so we do it a few times a week.

“We’ve been doing this since Ruby was 10 months old, it’s definitely been the most exciting and strangest part of my journey.

‘I’ve tried every diet in the book, but incorporating this into my exercise routine, along with a 1,500 calorie deficit, really kept me going.

“My weight was out of control – I was gaining weight all the time and I wouldn’t want to have my picture taken, and I wouldn’t take my son swimming.”

“People underestimate how useful it is to come up with unique exercises and how much you can actually do at home.”

“Diet-wise, I still try to eat as well as I can, but it’s not the end of the world if I don’t have a protein shake for breakfast every day, because it’s still better than what I was eating.”

“I would overeat almost every day – I would eat joint packs of crisps, chocolate, biscuits and ice cream in one sitting, easily reaching around 5,000 calories from snacks alone.

“When I got pregnant with my second child, I wanted to give up.” At this point I was already a size 26 and felt like I couldn’t lose any more weight.

“Doing everything at home meant I could go at my own pace, which was really helpful because there was no pressure to do things a certain way.

“When I was older, I couldn’t even walk to my parents’ house without feeling like I couldn’t breathe and have palpitations, and they only lived 10 minutes away, which was no way to live.

‘The only thing I want to do is lift and build muscle, just to look good and feel totally good.

‘The children will surely still be used as weights to get me there!’