My Weight Loss Story and Lifetime Battle For Health
My Weight Loss Story and Lifetime Battle for Health
by Dr Elizabeth Ann Diamond
I was born on Thursday 15th February 1951 at 6pm in Weston-super-Mare Somerset England.
I can always remember being ‘big’ very big; I had an older brother John who was born on 5th May 1947 who was as overweight as I was. He died in 1998 weighing nearly 30 stones. His death certificate cited obesity as the cause. We had a younger half sister who was a normal size. There was an older sister Anne who had been born on 11th October 1948 but sadly at about 9 weeks she was left propped up in her cot with a bottle of milk and choked to death, just before Christmas. My mother never got over this and I was born into a house of deep despair and misery. My mother never had any type of counselling and I’m sure that she blamed herself till the day she died.
My younger half sister born on 21st June 1953 always had plenty of pretty dresses but I had hand me downs from my father and simple dresses put together by my mother and Nan. My father had a market garden so I grew up in an environment where I was lucky enough to pick food straight from the gardens, fresh peas, raspberries, blackcurrants, plums, pears, apples, tomatoes wonderful. On the other hand my mother seemed to live on chocolate, chocolate digestive biscuits and clotted cream.
When I started school I was the biggest child there. My mother did take me to the school doctor to express how worried she was concerning my size but the doctor said I was a growing child and I would ‘grow out of it’ it was just ‘puppy fat’.
Well I didn’t grow out of it, I can recall with acute embarrassment my father taking me to a local fruit and vegetable wholesaler who encouraged me onto the potato scales and found that at the age of eight I weighed eight stones. He shot a knowing look to my father who was quiet and said nothing, well not in front of me at any rate. I am 5’4½” now so I must have been shorter then. I suppose through the war years there was little chance of my level of obesity. I’m sure my parents had no idea what to feed my brother and me on to counter our size.
I remember a junior school trip to the Bourneville chocolate factory in Bristol which made chocolate bars for Cadbury. Before I went it was drilled into me that I must not eat the gift pack I would be given, I must bring it all home for my parents or rather my mother. On the day we were allowed to eat anything we wanted in the factory and we did. I found that the huge waves of unfinished chocolate type mixture coming off one machine did not taste so good, so I and my mates didn’t have much of that. On leaving the factory we were given about four bars of chocolate which I put to one side as I had been instructed. Everyone else was eating theirs and I kept being asked why I wasn’t eating mine so I told them. I’d eaten so much chocolate in the factory that I didn’t really want any more any way. It seemed that my parents knew some adults who had visited the same factory and I can only assume that they were given a huge hamper of the stuff. When I offered up what they saw as the miserly four bars, I was accused me of eating the rest. Nothing I said would persuade them otherwise. Oh all the ‘stuff’ about foods that my mother loved!!
My Nan had mentioned many times that my mother would not drink milk as an infant so she was allowed to suck on a slim bar of Cadburys Dairy Milk chocolate instead. Even as a small child I can vividly remember seeing my mother and Nan without their false teeth, I didn’t like the way they looked, it was as if they had a hole instead of a mouth. By her twenties I don’t think that my mother had a natural tooth in her head.
In our house you never dared touch any sweets or chocolate you might come across. Some visitors arrived to stay with us for a while and they put a large bag of sweets on the table, days later they asked why none had been taken by us children, we just said we were not allowed to help ourselves. In my very early teens I visited a friend’s house and there were bowls of sweets dotted around and it was interesting to observe the people there just helped themselves as and when they wanted one, this was so strange to me! Having said that sweets were not banned, we started off getting three pence a day pocket money from Dad and this was later upped to two bob a week or 10p in today’s money. I spent mine on sweets and stationery; I’ve had a lifelong passion for books, reading and writing.
Another habit my mother had was to have a pot of clotted cream on the table to go with dessert. We were each offered some but with my mother’s beady eye on me I learned to either take a small teaspoon full or say I didn’t want any. Then my mother would have her fill and she and my half sister would run their fingers around the pot and lick them off. This actually made me feel quite sick, in later years I realised that milk, cream and butter did in fact make me feel sick. It was a very regular occurrence for me to feel what I used to describe as a ‘star’ in my throat which gave me a little warning that I was about to be horribly sick. I had always preferred water and gave up milk, tea and coffee at about seven years old when my family stopped forcing me to have it. They seemed so concerned that I did not want milk or a hot drink of any kind. I think drinking only the water has served me very well, and I truly love all sorts of fruit and vegetables. I chose not to smoke, drink alcohol, take prescribed or leisure drugs, this is no hardship I just don’t want any of them.
My mother had a cupboard containing her chocolate goodies and it was always locked with a list of the contents attached to the door, she would mark off what she took out. Even I thought that this was a mite strange, and I think this was a sign of abnormal food behaviour which got imprinted on me from a very young age.
One of my mother’s ‘specials’ was a chocolate filled sponge cake, two sponges were cooked then split into two or three and a mass of chocolate butter cream was made up and sandwiched between the layers. The chocolate layers were thicker than the sponge layers making a tall round cake and very substantial cake. This was very rich but tasted rather good in very small quantities, but I always felt quite sick afterwards, must have been all that butter, sugar and white flour. My mother much preferred this type of food to a proper meal. One of her other favourites which she gave me as a special treat one day was a Weetabix with about an inch of butter on top of it. I just could not eat it, I found it quite repulsive and she was very offended indeed.
If my mother made a stew she would cook it over a couple of days and it smelt and tasted wonderful. But it became much too thick for my liking and she often added masses of double cream right at the end, which was a great shame. I found that if I then added lots of plain water it made it a little better. Strangely enough none of my family ate much in the way of salad but I loved it and I could just pick everything from the garden and make my own. My father grew tomatoes commercially but I was the only one in the family who would eat them, most times straight from the vine. This was never a problem with my father; he often cooked but not the day to day meals. Luckily my Nan was there most of the time to feed us but when we moved to the country we didn’t see her so often, then she became quite frail and died of cancer when I was fifteen.
Because my mother wasn’t keen on everyday cooking I seemed to fall into the role of cook from a very early age and cooked for all of us if my Nan wasn’t around. In a way this was good because I could use whatever fruit and vegetables that we had available. I had learned to cook with my Nan; puddings were very often boiled suet or sponge with fresh or dried fruits and custard, everything home made but so stodgy.
My Nan was a very hard working wiry woman without an ounce of excess flesh much less fat on her. My earliest memories of my mother were that she was petite with a tiny 23”waist and wore high stiletto heeled shoes which marked all the floors. My father was a healthy, strong well built man, tanned from working outside everyday in his market garden.
My paternal grandfather, everyone called him Pops, was as round as he was tall and my brother was very like him. I suppose I was the same sort of shape but I was blond rather than dark haired as they were. I certainly take after my father, same colouring and skin.
In 1964 when I was thirteen we moved out to the country about a 30 minute car ride from Weston-super-Mare. My father had sold the market garden for building and bought a small holding. My father and brother worked as agricultural contractors, kept various beasts such as cows, sheep, pigs, chickens and lamas. Dad still grew fruit and vegetables albeit on a slightly smaller scale than before. My brother had been sent to an agricultural school when he was 11 but was taken out of it when he was about 16 as my mother had become too ill to work with my father on the market garden and mobile shop.
My mother was in and out of hospital a lot, various operations then convalescence; she ended up with Diabetes Mellitus type 11 in later life and had such poor circulation in her legs that her feet were chopped off because gangrene had set in.
I must have been about 14 when I witnessed a friend’s father opening a tin of peas which were served up immediately, this seemed just like magic to me and I watched with great interest. We either had fresh or packets of dried marrowfat peas.
I started at the Kings of Wessex School in Cheddar which had just opened; again I was the biggest child there, male or female. I knitted myself a royal blue school jumper because you could not buy one in my size and my parents had a couple of skirts made for me. They bought a couple of aertex shirts but they were skin tight on me, but at last I had a school uniform.
I discovered boys immediately and my size did not seem to be a problem. My parents got me a scooter when I turned 15 and I used to go to work in Street, Highbridge, Wells and Cheddar. This was the start of a passion for motorcycles, my Nan used to get around on a BSA Winged Wheel and my mother was a motorcycle dispatch rider during World War 11 on a BSA 650. There wasn’t a bus stop within two miles, and then little chance of a bus to these places at the right time for work.
One of my strongest memories was as a teenager at Axbridge Blackberry Fair when I realised that for the first time in my life, everything I was wearing had been bought off the peg and not handed down from my father or handmade, and looked it!!! This was a great feeling. My family had always considered me to be very quiet but I believe that I had just learned to keep my head down and observe, otherwise I seemed to get myself into lots of trouble. They never seemed to ask my opinion or had any interest in what I was thinking when I lived with them, I don’t think they had any idea of who I was, really was.
I started going out with my first husband at 15 and he affectionately called me tree trunk legs! He had a motorbike and I loved motorbikes. We got engaged when I was 16 and married at 18 on Saturday October 11th 1969. We had not realised that the date we had chosen would have been my elder sisters 21st birthday, and my mother was refusing to allow me to marry. There were lots of arguments between my parents but in the end I think that my father signed the documents. I do remember my father telling my mother that she should be over ‘all that’ by now.
Looking back on all this I think I was looking for an escape route to get out of the family home but I did like my husband to be very much, and still do as a friend. I had searched for the love that I didn’t seem to get from my parents. But as I said I can see now that this was my escape route to a much happier home life. I was now around 18 stone, so I weighed a stone for each year of my life. I had the wedding dress made in Cheddar but the weight was piling on as it was being made. I was eating because any deadline stressed me, so the dressmaker kept adjusting the dress outwards. I was eating for comfort I suppose? I was eating to push down all the unpleasant feelings, the misery that lingered around my elder sister’s death, of not fitting in and not being valued for who I really was. That was how I saw things but now I see how this ‘character’ building was a huge part in making me what I am now, which I am very happy with.
Being the elder surviving girl I seemed to bring with it severe limitations on my freedom which my younger half-sister was able to miss out on. This actually had the effect of making me very independent, reliant upon myself, and able to run my own life. A very valuable lesson for me to learn at an early age, this has served me very well since those times. I think it might have been much worse if I had been doted on and then released into the world never able to replicate any unconditional parental love.
The way I had tried to keep my weight stable between 15 and 18 when I married, was to not eat when I was out with Ken. I watched everyone else eat bags of chips; I tried to avoid them as I always felt quite unwell if I ate them anyway. I was never offered any food while I was at my in-laws, so that was quite easy. When I was at home I often made salads up for my boyfriend and me as there was always plenty in the garden.
I decided to join Weight Watchers (WW) in Wells when I was about 20 in 1971 as by then I had been fighting to reduce my weight for years. I was probably 17 or 18 stones at that time. I had been reading everything that I could find on the subject, mainly from magazines but I still hadn’t found the answers for myself. I started to lose weight very well, my husband’s brother Dennis joined with me weighing in at 23 stone. Dennis lost weight very quickly, averaging about 7lbs per week right down to half his original weight. He never put any back on again and stayed at that size until he passed away in his sixties.
I wasn’t losing it as fast but I was doing very well until I hit a plateau and I got quite disillusioned as I was working very hard at it. It turned out that I was pregnant; we had been trying for about three years so we were very pleased. Unfortunately I had a miscarriage at around eight weeks, this hit me hard but my husband said he would drive me to the WW class and wait for me, but unbeknown to me he just drove off leaving me to get home on the bus and then walk the last two miles. My husband just wanted me to lose weight and that was his way of ‘helping’ me. He was very upset about the baby and blamed me because of my size. He kept telling people that I was going to ‘weight lifters’, which they took seriously, just his little joke but actually quite prophetic!
I continued with Weight Watchers and eventually got down to 10 stone 12lbs for a fleeting moment before my weight started going up again. I was pregnant for the second time and on 12th April 1974 my eldest son Daimion was born weighing 8lbs 6ozs. Over the next two years I endured six further miscarriages all around 8 weeks, but my daughter Lucie was born on 6th July 1976 weighing 8lbs.
I will never forget the comments from the doctor, who delivered her, a Doctor Featherstone, didn’t know him before and have never seen him since but I remember his name more than 30 years later. Well he didn’t actually tell me he told my husband that he must never ever let our daughter reach my size and my husband chose to remind me of this at every opportunity. I would have been around 22 stones at that time.
Another doctor when I was pregnant had told me to lose weight in whatever way I could as nothing could be as harmful as my excess weight. Knowing what I know now there are many very harmful ways to lose weight which I would never recommend.
There was a period when I had restricted my eating to 6 large oranges and a small 6” pizza a day. I stuck to this for weeks, not ideal and I fully realise this now. How much did I lose? To my amazement absolutely nothing at all. The one thing that I never tried was the tape worm pill. The idea was that you swallowed a tapeworm egg in a pill and this grew inside of you eventually stealing nutrients so that you lost weight. Sorry that was just too much for me.
After Lucie was born I was fitted with a coil but this caused endless problems with excessive bleeding, it works by promoting miscarriages and the coil came out with the last foetus embedded in it. This made about another 6 miscarriages with all the emotional distress and the hormonal roller coaster that accompanies them.
I had tried many different diets by this time, yo-yoing up and down in the process. I discovered that I had many intolerances to food and drinks after seeing an allergist in Taunton. Later I was to realise that this was because my body was not able to digest the food fully so it was regarded as toxic by my bodily systems. I’ve sorted all this out for myself now, and I am fine on all good foods. I put the whole family onto my new way of eating and we all did well although my first husband has always been very fit and healthy. I had many and various aches & pains but these soon disappeared when I cut out the foods and drinks that were causing me problems. The big problem was that I had little idea of what foods were healthy or indeed which contained carbohydrates and/or protein, what vitamins did and more.
In 1978 joined an International Motorcycle Group was quickly elected onto the National Committee and in 1982 I started my own business running International motorcycle events, this enabled me to work from home and be there for my children. I had always worked except for one year after Daimion was born, I was sure that I was going to turn into a cabbage if I did not have any work to stimulate me.
I started to see my second husband in June 1986; I weighed about 17 stones and fell pregnant immediately. William was born in Southmead Hospital, Bristol at 10lb 12ozs on Tuesday April 7th 1987, at 1.40 pm.
The next pregnancy occurred shortly after giving birth to William. I was suspicious and thought I might be pregnant but I had a miscarriage at about 6-8 weeks. However something still wasn’t quite right and I could feel my womb was quite large, eventually I was given a scan and discovered that I was 22 weeks pregnant. Just one week on and still with no examination from any doctor I went into labour and my son Anthony was born still kicking but was taken away and brought back dead, this was 12th February 1988. It turned out that I had been expecting triplets, identical boys and had lost the first but another had died at about 12 weeks and he came away the next day. I had a D&C and picked up an unpleasant infection and suffered a nasty yellow discharge until my body was able to sort this out for itself.
I got pregnant again but this baby died inside me, I refused another D&C because of the problems with the first one and at what would have been four months I lost the dead baby and a huge amount of blood. But I believe that my body had been able to heal itself in its own way, by giving it the chance to do so.
From this point on I am going to just give a comparison with my heaviest weight. I am still progressing downwards with my weight loss but I would rather wait until I am much closer to my goal weight before I reveal the actual weights. Today is 10th February 2008 and I am nearly 9 stones lighter than at my heaviest.
The last time I got pregnant was with my youngest son Meirion who was born on Tuesday 2nd January 1990 at 1.41pm in Southmead Hospital, Bristol. I must have been about 5 stones lighter than my heaviest when Meirion was born and before he was two I had reached nearly 1 stone lighter than my heaviest. I then tried many different diet classes, books, techniques, ‘slimming’ products and even some very expensive ‘magic’ weight loss pills.
Nothing was working at all well until I started with Slimming World; I was now 2 stones lighter than my heaviest and it was June 1993. The lecturer was truly inspirational and by the 12th February 1994 after many miles of walking and very strict dieting I was down to 10 stones lighter than my heaviest and was toned, fit and muscular and felt great although by this time my second marriage was breaking down.
It was Valentine’s Day 1994 and my husband went off to work without giving me a card or anything, I felt very unhappy and broke down in tears. A couple of hours later he was unexpectedly back and when he saw me crying he said “you’ve heard then”. When it was clear that I didn’t know what he was talking about he told me that my lovely Lucie had died in her sleep at her father’s house, she was seventeen. Later after the post mortem we were told she’d died of meningitis. Anthony died on the 12th February 1988, my paternal grandfather died on 13th February 1961 and now Lucie was dead on 14th February 1994, the next day way my 43rd birthday. I did not think about eating anything for days.
My daughter’s death changed everything; I looked at life very differently and decided to get rid of everything that I did not enjoy. I decided that life was too short, who knows when we will die? We may only have a split second left. I took stock of my life and started to clear away ‘stuff’ that was a hassle. I very much valued the children I did still have, my three sons, Daimion, William and Meirion, I then truly started on the healing pathway. But again I started to eat whatever I thought I wanted, thinking why not, life’s too short etc, and food was a comfort.
I developed as a healer with the World Federation of Healing. Part of what I now wanted to do was to go and get myself some formal qualifications and as my mother now had Diabetes Mellitus Type 11, I announced to my father that I was not going ‘there’ thank you very much. I started to study nutrition with The Dr Lawrence Plaskett College of Nutritional Medicine. I enrolled on what was to be five years of training in Nutritional Medicine to advanced level. I gained my diploma in Nutrition followed by further diplomas in Nutritional Therapy, Nutritional Medicine and advanced Nutritional Medicine and studied Iridology as a diagnostic tool. For the last two years while I worked towards my Advanced Nutritional Medicine diploma I carried out my own research on Morbid Obesity, my definition of that term is anyone who is more than twice their ‘normal’ weight. I held my first year long study with local people in this category after many responses from a letter that I had published in the local paper.
I gave up my honorary Vice-Presidency of Motorcycle Action Group and the four motorcycle events I ran every year. I still had to run one 8 weeks, 12 weeks and 7 months after Lucie’s death, this was very hard for me as she was such a help with building up to and during the events, she loved motorcycles and working the shows with me. Once I completed these shows I then retired from this work. But I was overeating and at the last show I had gone up to 7 stones lighter than my heaviest, I had actually just knocked a stone off by fasting on water for nearly four days and I was down to 8 stones lighter. This is something that since I became an adult I’d regularly done just to feel better. It was as if my body was able to repair itself whilst I gave my digestive system a break, at the end I felt absolutely wonderful until I started eating again, albeit very sensibly. It was easier for me to eat nothing than it was to eat a tiny amount as this seemed to trigger off something in me. At one point I was doing this every month to try and stop putting on weight, then twice a year until the beginning of 2007. I saw this as a way of healing myself rather than actively losing weight, it did help a bit as many of my bodily systems were not working correctly.
I was so amazed at what I was learning with the nutritional medicine, and so angry that this information was not freely available. I had enrolled on what was to be five years of training in Nutritional Medicine to advanced level. In 1996 I converted a building at my home into my consulting room and started seeing clients, I had also spent two years developing my healing ability. Then in September 1996 I enrolled with the local college to do GCSE’s in Chemistry and Physiology & Health. A tutor told me about the Open University and I joined immediately so in one year I took 180 points with the OU, the maximum that they allow in one year, completed and passed 2 GCSE’s and at the same time finishing off my Iridology and Advanced Nutritional medicine courses in London. That was hard work, but I did it and survived.
At the beginning of 1998 I decided that I would do something that I had wanted to for many years but was waiting until I lost enough weight. But it was time to take action and to do it now. I was back up to 4 stones lighter but I got my courage together and joined a local gym, I found that lifting heavy weights was easy for me and I was delighted to find it also relaxed me. I did not really lose any bodyweight but I was losing fat and gaining muscle which meant that my body was using more energy than before.
My brother died aged fifty on April 14th 1998, he had been registered disabled for some years, and he was nearly 30 stones and 5’8” tall. I could easily have gone the same way as we must have had the same bodily malfunctions. The difference being that I have always done whatever I could to stay healthy, albeit heavier than the norm. My brother NEVER took any exercise, preferring to sit and ride a tractor all day then spend most nights down the pub as a member of various village clubs, before he married and then divorced. In his last years he had a mobility scooter and wheelchairs to get himself about when he was well enough.
My second husband finally left on Monday 14th December 1998 after a disastrous court case with the builder who worked on my consulting room and who my ex subsequently sacked. The builder had then sued me and won, I was now £40,000 in debt with no way to pay as I had given up the shows and was studying with the Open University for my first degree. I had put my ex through University to become a Maths/Science teacher. My ex-husband decided that he was now off leaving me and the boys to survive somehow with no financial or really any other type of help from him. I’m very pleased to say that survive we did although it has been very hard for my two younger sons because of their father’s attitude towards them. I love all my sons dearly but they had such hard lessons to learn and my heart broke for them many times.
Then my mother died on 31st March 1999 the night of a Blue Moon. Still on that big old roller coaster but that is the way life goes at times!!
In June 1999 I was down to more than 7 stones lighter it had been quite a personal milestone for me to get down to that weight. I pushed on and decided to try the Atkins diet although Dr Lawrence Plaskett who I trained with always said that this could be quite a dangerous way of eating. He said that we need carbohydrates so our metabolic flame can burn, without this our body goes into ketosis and burns our muscles or protein rather than fat which compromises the correct functioning of the kidneys and weakens the body.
I lost weight quite dramatically and was down to 10 stones lighter by the beginning of August 1999. An old friend had just asked me to run a large American Lifestyle Show with him, he said he had the money and I had the know how, this was the start of my show organising years once more.
I was starting to have a problem that I had never suffered before, constipation, very severe constipation. I knew this was the result of the diet that I’d been following, it was extremely uncomfortable. I was due to attend summer school at Brighton University as a part of my psychology degree and I decided to eat the meals that were provided in the canteen to see if I could ease the problem. Well it took a couple of days before I could ‘go’ and a couple more before I had cleared the backlog so to speak!! Not a good time, and one I never want to repeat, at times I thought that I was going to split open, oh dear, what a state to be in. Once I was off the Atkins the weight started to go on again, I had to find another way.
On Saturday February 26th 2000, I weighed in at just over 6 stones lighter. I was to run three Annual American shows with my business partner at the Three Counties Showground, but before the last one he had a heart attack and ended up having a triple heart by-pass. He had fulfilled his wish of putting on these events with my help and the Royal Bath & West Showground was calling me back to put on an event at their showground, eight friends came in to put up the money. I ran two annual events but it was clear that it was financially too risky to do a third as I might lose our home, so I passed this event onto another company.
I was already building up my private practice and was now a member of several business clubs. But I had been badly hit by giving up running my beloved shows and I felt as though I was in limbo. I had no real motivation and it was hard work trying to survive financially. I was sitting around just staring into space wondering where my life was taking me. I was continuing with my studies but I was missing something.
In February 2005 I was experiencing excruciating pain in both knees, could not walk very far and really struggled coming down the stairs but I could go up stairs without too much bother. A close friend tried to persuade me to go and see the doctor but I did not want to end up like my brother, dead. So I decided to get myself a trainer and go back to the gym. The trainer was brilliant she identified that my inner thigh muscles had wasted and she devised a program for me. So I started and found that I progressed very quickly after the initial waves, days and weeks of pain. I found early morning suited me best and many a time I found myself in the gym by 6.30am trudging the treadmill not really registering how I had got there. I think that I was on autopilot and my higher self was getting me there. I had worked on my spiritual side and my psychological side but this was different. The trainers were brilliant and appreciated my efforts; I was about 3 stones lighter when I started. But I had reached my top weight the previous year, it had been difficult to wipe my bottom, or wash my feet, what a terrible state to be in for me. I wasn’t going to ask anyone else to do this for me either. My feet had some very dry skin which was splitting and becoming very sore. So I put myself on regular 3 day water fasts to get the weight off and allow my body to heal, I am sure that I had succumbed to diabetes and I had to reverse this one way or another.
At the gym, I was there seven days a week most weeks, I soon got back the use of my legs, before I started back it felt like they had no strength and that I could have easily toppled over. There was no way I could have kicked a football as I could not have balanced on one leg. I hadn’t been able to have a bath for two years because it was almost impossible to lift myself out with no strength in my legs to help me. I did have showers but I do love to soak in the bath. For a couple of months before joining the gym I had managed to stabilise my weight which was a very big deal for me I was creeping down in weight very slowly but I seemed to have left behind the weight yo yoing which could see a stone added in just a couple of days. I stayed at 5 stones lighter for months then suddenly dropped to 6 stones lighter.
In May 2006 I decided that it was time to carry out some more research on Morbid Obesity and got another letter published in a local paper asking for volunteers who were at least twice their ‘normal’ weight. I had a mass of replies and spent a year on this research with the new group of participants.
In May 2007 I still adored the weight lifting but my muscles were now getting tired and I developed some kind of painful irritation and I was actively searching to find out what it was. It wasn’t thrush or any vaginal condition, it could have been protein in the urine, sugar in the urine, a diabetic condition or cystitis but it really was most unpleasant. I tried many naturopathic remedies with limited success but in the end I meditated and asked what my body was trying to tell me and immediately after suffering for about 18 months my body told me that I must pay it some attention. Wow, that was all I needed to understand and I suffer no more, wonderful just wonderful.
Through many years I have been sorting and simplifying my life, giving away what I had no more need of. Then at 10am on June 16th 2007 whilst my middle son and my three greyhounds were in the front room someone came in the back door. They emptied his wallet, went into the middle room just a few feet from us, took my handbag, purse, cheque books, iridology camera and keys and then used them to take my car as well. Funny I didn’t feel upset or angry, the police said they were after money and things for sale but I had to stop all my cheque books, credit and debit cards. It wasn’t worth losing my no claims on a car worth maybe £100 but the house insurers refused to pay out as the thieves had not broken in. I’d had the car for nearly 18 years so that was a bit of a shock but it showed me it was best not to get too attached to anything or even anyone.
I woke up on July 9th 2007 after attempting without success to book a stand to sell my healing jewellery at a local healing weekend. I’d asked several times over the course of 3 months but with no joy. I now realise that this was a part of the Universal plan for me and this spurred me to start ringing round to try and book in at other suitable events. I had no real success until I decided to phone the Winter Gardens in my home town to find out the dates of the healing events there. I spoke to the events manager and he explained that one event did not happen anymore and another booked for October had just been cancelled. I found myself saying “well I had better do it myself then as I have all the skills”, I was taken up on this immediately. I decided that a Saturday in September just over 11 weeks away would be good. What had happened? Before that moment I had absolutely no plan to ever put on an event again and here I was back in the thick of it. The Event went exactly according to plan and I will now holding two events each year and I just love it. I’m on a very tight budget because there is Free Admission to all visitors but as long as I do not lose money that is fine.
I put no weight on at Christmas 2007 or for that matter in 2006; I just ate as I normally do. In May 2007 after more research I found some work on food and insulin irregularities, by this time I was trying to keep off of sweet things including fruit, I have always adored fresh fruit but it seemed to send my blood sugar haywire. I put myself mainly on the foods suggested including certain fruits and more or less eliminated the ones that were said to be problematic, at first. I was feeling ok and enjoying this regime. Gradually I realised that I was not piling on any weight and that without any effort my weight was gently going down and down.
I suddenly realised I was well over 7 stones lighter a huge milestone for me. I don’t focus on what I weigh because my philosophy is health first and the weight loss will follow, so I hadn’t really taken in where I’d got to. I do believe that if you can get the body working as well as it can then the weight loss will follow. I have witnessed all the weight loss classes at first hand and saw people starving themselves for days before they were due to weigh and then straight off to the fish & chip shop afterwards as a treat. Well sorry that just isn’t going to work and it is certainly not a healthy way to attempt to lose weight.
It is now February 2008 and my weight is nearly 9 stones lighter which I find amazing. I know that sorting out the psychological and emotional problems and releasing any bitterness from myself has really given me a huge boost, this is still an ongoing process. I have always very actively searched for my own answers and acted on them. I feel fit and strong so I am going to really start pushing now and I have already increased my exercise regime. I don’t need very much sleep now and I’m filling my life with work that I love.
Remember it is not all about food that is just a small part of the equation, perhaps even the easiest part, working on the emotions, cycles, patterns and the philosophy of the body is where the permanent healthy weight loss answers are. I’ve had well meaning people tell me that if I eat exactly what they say I will lose weight. But I don’t want to lose weight only to regain it which is what happens in a huge percentage of cases, I am totally focused on healthy and permanent weight loss. My battle has been with central obesity but more on this elsewhere.
I heard Esther Ransome say that as a young woman she had a weight problem but when she started working on something she loved there was no time for overeating, she is so right. I think that is where I am right now, I enjoy what I do eat and feel good when I’ve eaten it. What a turn around. It is such a great feeling to be back in control. The main thing that it is not all about food, it is about what, why, how and why you eat. It is about stuck emotions, it is about bodily malfunctions and psychological health.
When I talk about overeating I am not in the same league as some you see on the television in various programs. I couldn’t afford to eat what these people manage to tuck away and I do believe that good wholefoods are best for all. However every person is different, there is no one diet of any kind that will work for everyone. I do believe that the psychological aspects can be far more important to take into consideration when working towards Healthy Weight Loss.
The New Chapter
On 16th March 2008 I ended up in Hospital after a large abscess had developed in just 4 days. I had to have an immediate operation to deal with it and I have to say that the surgeons were absolutely wonderful. This was the first time I’d been in hospital for over 18 years since my youngest son was born. In fact the doctor’s surgery and the hospital had removed me and my sons from their lists as they thought we had moved away. My blood glucose after fasting for two days was 15.7 so I was a full blown diabetic and I then realised that I had been for three full years! I’d had a severe symptom which I hadn’t been able pin down as it was not generally connected to this condition. I wonder what my blood glucose reading would have been if I hadn’t fasted.
This was a real wake-up call, I needed to look very closely at my whole life-style and make adjustments. I already knew that diabetes is about lack of joy and sweetness in life. The reason that I had gone into Nutritional Medicine and studied for many years was because my mother had Diabetes Mellitus Type 11 and I saw at first hand what this condition can develop into. She lost both her feet due to gangrene and I had to witness her taking a week to die after she had a stroke. That was 10 years ago, she was unable to speak or communicate except with her eyes and about each five minutes she was having a fit. Not a way that I would chose for anyone to pass on. But it does not have to be like that.
I followed the diabetes diet guidelines to the letter, felt very well indeed but put on 7lbs in less than 8 weeks, so as of 7th May 2008 I decided I must sort things in my own way. Two months after my diagnosis a nurse did a blood glucose test, it was 7.8 and she told me that I was no longer diabetic. She had to tell me several times as it was not sinking in. Great news but as I had been a full blown undiagnosed diabetic for three years this did not mean I could ignore this condition. I had an appointment with the diabetes nutritionist on 4th June. She was exceptionally helpful and as I practice nutritional medicine myself I had no problem accepting the information that she was giving me. I was also very pleased to find that I’d knocked off the weight I’d put on and more.
I’ve never been afraid of exercise and for nine years I’d been seriously weight and strength training in my local gyms. But in July 2007 I had to give up as I had stopped seeing or feeling any benefit from all my hard work, it just seemed to tire me out. I now realise that this was because of the Diabetes Mellitus Type 11.
Where am I now? Well I feel better than I have for years, lots of energy, I am not taking any medication and will keep refusing to do so as I am happy to work hard to help myself. All prescribed medications carry risks of their own. In the meantime the number of people suffering from borderline or pre Diabetes Mellitus Type 11 seem to have grown to epic proportions. I utilised all my years of training and have spent the last three months learning all that I could, and continue to do so, because I had to help myself. Now I am ready to help others.
I am now putting together workshops and talks designed to help all at risk of Diabetes or indeed any other condition as a result of my extensive research and study. These workshops will also benefit therapists and practitioners who wish to learn more to give the latest information to enable them to help others at risk of this condition. See the New Workshop page for details.
I have just been sponsored to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, a full upgrade from my Associate membership.