Mum-of-five Deborah Adams, 49, decided to leave her corporate job to become a weight loss consultant. She wanted to help others who wanted to slim down after she lost eight stone with the 1:1 Diet by Cambridge Weight Plan.
She said: “Having changed my life I started to think there must be other people like me who needed the same one-to-one support I received.
“I qualified as a consultant in September 2018 and worked only evenings and on weekends to begin with, in addition to my existing job.
‘’By January, I was earning more than I had done in my full-time managerial role of underwriting.”
She was quickly able to increase her earnings by turning the side hustle into a full-time career.
READ MORE: Pensioner gets refund of £1,132 thanks to Martin Lewis tip
“I would eat four flakes a day. I could eat a whole coffee cake to myself, and have a drink when I get in; those sorts of habits.”
Ms Adams said the hardest challenge of her weight loss journey was maintaining what she had lost.
She said: “Losing weight is one thing, but keeping the weight off is different. When I felt stressed, instead of eating food I went for a walk.
“I started gardening, I fell in love with my garden, and I started listening to audiobooks when going out on walks.
READ MORE: Martin Lewis urges energy customers to act as ‘crucial’ deadline looms
“Diet-wise, protein, lots of veg and my carbohydrates keeping them really small and not the quantities that I used to.”
There are several ways Britons can boost their earnings in 2023 by taking on a side hustle.
One option is to sign up for a task app, where people are hired to help with household tasks such as putting together furniture.
Examples of these apps include TaskRabbit, Tasker and Airtasker, which can earn a person hundreds of pounds a month.
Another option is to take up a job as a delivery driver, bringing people meals or other food, with groups such as UberEats and Deliveroo.
Drivers are self-employed and can choose to work when they want, so a person can fit it around another job.
Deliveroo says delivery drivers can get fees of up to £16 an hour depending on where they operate.
People may also want to look at making some extra money by taking part in user testing, where companies test out new products by getting their target users to try them out.
Participants are asked to use a product or feature and then provide their feedback based on their experience.
