Warning: article contains photograph of individual's post-surgery bottom that some readers may find offensive
When Heidi Faulkner lost half her body weight, she was left with an unexpected, unwanted side effect.
The property manager, from Hertfordshire, found herself with excess skin around her bum and legs, so jetted off abroad for "booty lift" plastic surgery .
But instead of getting the toned physique she desired, the budget procedure left the mum-of-one with diagonal scars across her buttocks.
The surgeon had removed too much fat, meaning that in the weeks after surgery, Faulkner even found it difficult to sit down.
Faulkner, 36, had been unhappy with her size for years when she decided to lose weight.
"I overate, I didn't exercise. I was in foster home and what not and I wasn't taught to look after myself," she explains in Channel 5 show Botched Up Bodies.
Faulkner says it used to take her a month of planning to find an outfit to wear on a night out before she lost weight, because it was hard to find clothes she liked in her size.
"I didn't want to be the fat girl out with my skinny mates," she says.
After trying "every diet going" and even giving hypnosis a try, Faulkner opted to have a gastric band fitted by a surgeon here in the UK. The band helped her to halve her body weight and she went from 16 stone to eight stone.
Although she was initially thrilled with the results, a leak in the gastric band meant Faulkner soon began to put weight on again.
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The band was fixed and Faulkner lost the weight again, but her fluctuation in size left her with excess skin around her legs and bum.
"My little boy actually said to me: 'Mum, it looks like your bum's melted'," she says.
Knowing that going to the gym wasn't going to shift the skin, Faulkner turned to surgery for a second time. But as bum life procedures cost £4,296 on average in the UK, she flew to Prague in the hope of having the same procedure at a fraction of the cost.
But when her bandages were removed after surgery, Faulkner was in for a shock.
"It looked as if a shark has come and bitten my bottom and taken a chunk away," she says.
"I remember hearing someone screaming and then realising it was me."
Faulkner now has diagonal scars across her buttocks and says she regrets having the cheap surgery. She wants others to know the dangers budget procedures aboard can hold.
"I didn't want to be embarrassed my myself anymore,"she says. "But by me trying to put that right, I've just created bigger problems."
Heidi Faulkner appears on Botched Up Bodies, Tuesday night at 10pm on Channel 5.
