Fighting fit! Obese woman sheds a remarkable SIX STONE to realise her childhood dream of moving to China to learn Kung Fu with Shaolin monks
Alana Becker, 25 from Surbiton, saw her weight balloon to more than 17 stone
Fearing for her health, she visited a body composition clinic for a Bodyscan
Experts warned her body fat stood at 45% - around twice as high as it should be
She dropped 6 stone, following her dream to learn Kung Fu in Yantai, China
By Unity Blott For Mailonline
PUBLISHED: 10:52 EST, 12 November 2017 | UPDATED: 11:43 EST, 12 November 2017
A woman has realised her childhood dream of travelling to China to learn Kung Fu - after dropping a remarkable 6 stone.
Alana Becker, 25 from Surbiton, south west London, ballooned to over 17 stone after living off a diet laden with junk food and fizzy drinks.
Despite fears she could be putting her life at risk, it was only last summer that she began to reverse her dangerously unhealthy lifestyle and pursue her dream of training at the 1,500-year-old Shaolin monastery.
Alana told MailOnline FEMAIL: 'I was tired of not being able to do things – even just playing football with my mates I found myself gasping for air.'
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Fighting fit: Alana ballooned to over 17 stone after living off a diet laden with junk food and fizzy drinks (left) but has dropped an impressive 6 stone to pursue her Kung Fu dream (right)
The Kung Fu enthusiast finally overhauled her lifestyle after her stepdfather Justin suggested she visited Bodyscan, a body composition clinic in London.
There, experts provided Alana with a precise measurement of the amount of body fat, lean tissue and bone in each major part of her body.
The technology, which is used by the likes of Arsenal FC and England Rugby, works by using dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) to pinpoint areas of fat within the body, which experts say is more accurate than the traditional measure of BMI.
Alana commented: 'The idea of having a detailed picture of what you look like was interesting. The body scan told me how overweight I was (which wasn't a surprise!).'
With the scan revealing that she had an extremely high body fat percentage at 45 (a healthy woman of her age should be somewhere between 20 and 30 per cent), Amy realised things had to change - and used her Kung Fu dream as motivation.
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Fresh start: Despite fears she could be putting her life at risk, it was only last summer that she began to reverse her dangerously unhealthy lifestyle and pursue her dream of training at a Shaolin monaster (pictured here at the Shaolin monastery in Yantai, Shandong province)
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Worrying: With Alan's Bodyscan revealing that she had an extremely high body fat percentage at 45 (left), Amy realised things had to change. Pictured right, her scan after losing weight
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Speaking about her incredible transformation, Alana said: 'I don't think I would have had the courage to do this if I hadn't lost the weight that I did, let alone the fitness'
She said: 'It's been a dream of mine since I was a kid to travel to China and study Kung Fu. I knew I'd have to lose a lot of weight if I wanted to do it.'
In pursuit of her dream, Alana set about changing up her lifestyle, using a fitness app to lose almost 9 lbs in the first month alone.
'I would train for about five or six hours a week, with a mixture of strength training, HIIT training and running a part of my exercise regime,' she recalled.
Alana also completely changed her diet, swapping the junk food and fizzy drinks for plenty of protein, fruit and vegetables.
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Alana said of her amazing loss: 'I was told that this was the most that anyone has lost in under a year. It's had such a huge impact on my inner confidence'
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Better than before: Alana also completely changed her diet, swapping the junk food and fizzy drinks for plenty of protein, fruit and vegetables
'Friends and family began to notice the results which gave me added motivation,' she said. 'It was then that I started to explore the possibility of traveling to China.'
Following her first scan in August 2016, Alana lost nearly 5 stone to weigh in at 12 stone 9 lbs in under a year.
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What is Bodyscan?
With clinics in both Bank and Marylebone, Bodyscan is the only DEXA body composition facility in London.
The technology, which is used by the likes of Arsenal FC and England Rugby, works by using dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) to pinpoint areas of fat within the body, more accurately than the traditional measure of BMI.
She has now lost a total of more than six stone and a third of her body fat, taking her to a much healthier 10 stone 11 lbs.
'I was told that this was the most that anyone has lost in under a year' she said, after returning for a follow-up scan in the summer.
'It's had such a huge impact on my inner confidence.'
She recently flew to China to spend a year learning martial arts at the Shaolin monastery in Yantai, Shandong province, and now trains for four and a half hours a day, doing anything from acrobatics to intense mountain runs.
'I don't think I would have had the courage to do this if I hadn't lost the weight that I did, let alone the fitness,' Alana said.
'It's so inspiring being out here and I'm so excited to keep learning from the monks!'
