When I was on a diet I’ve always been very disciplined and stuck to it but as soon as I got to a target weight, the weight would gradually come back and I would never do anything about it in the early stages. That’s where I’ve found a recipe for success now in that I know how to lose the weight. I can go away on holiday and eat for two to three weeks, every day lots of lovely food, but I will come home, and I will rigorously stick to the diet plan that I’ve been following for the last I suppose it’s now getting on to six years, I’ve been following my current plan. I’ve been following what’s known as the 5:2 diet.

And then you did the 5:2 as it is advised?

That, for when I was losing weight, yes, and then I tried to go to one day a week but gradually it was coming back on again. So, I went back to two and then I had to give up running because I’ve got an arthritic knee and I was told not to, that running wasn’t really a good idea. I also had to give up dancing. We’d been doing Latin and ballroom dancing and that was even worse because of the twisting and swivelling on that leg. So, I was doing less and less exercise.

So I decided that I had to do something to compensate for putting the weight back on. So I went to this modified 5:2. So, it was a 4:3 mostly but not quite so stringent. I did allow myself a few more calories and generally I do Monday, Wednesday, Friday. This week because Wednesday was our anniversary of our engagement, I actually did yesterday as a fasting day and I’m going to be doing today as a fasting day.

I personally find it easier if somebody says to me, don’t eat any sweet things. Cut it out all altogether I will comply with that much easier than if somebody says, Well you can have a little bit of chocolate, but only a bit every day Because I like volumes, I don’t want to eat one biscuit, I want to eat the whole packet of biscuits. So if I’m, for me personally I find it easier if people were to give me a list and say, Right, you can’t eat any biscuits, you can’t eat any crisps. You can’t eat any you know.

Yeah.

I find an exclusion diet, for me personally, for my personality because I’m quite compliant, is much easier.

Okay.

So, have you ever heard of the alphabet diet? So, you cut out all foods beginning with A and then the next week, all foods beginning with B.

You have done that diet?

I have done every diet, yeah over the years. So I found those quite easy [laughs].

Yeah?

Yeah.

Okay, and has it worked for you that diet?

I only did it for a short period of time, but yeah, exclusion diets for me work much better than, than portion size really.

But I think I’ve probably done nearly every diet that’s out there. I’ve done the Heart Foundation, the Mayo Clinic, I’ve done all the… tried various meal replacement ones, I’ve done Slimmer’s World, Weight Watchers, Green Goddess one. I’ve tried anything where anybody I’ve looked at and thought, ‘God you, you know, you’re looking really… you’ve lost some weight; you look great. How have you done that,’ because obviously, that’s the thing you want to know. “How have you done that?” And they’ll say, “Ooh, you know, I’ve done it with the Atkins diet, or the Hay diet, or…” Yeh, tried that, done that, you know. But I suppose the most successful was the meal replacement, but that’s the most unstainable one, but that’s what worked because it’s so strict with the calories. You know, dear god, you can’t help but lose weight on six hundred calories a day, can you? But the willpower that that takes to do is.. .you know it’s not willpower that I can find again. I suppose if somebody came to me and said, “Well, you know, if you don’t this you will die, and soon,” then you’d probably find that willpower. But, other than that the willpower to do that is phenomenal because it just messes with your whole life; your whole life is messed with doing that. So, it’s very much short-term.

But even things like oven chips, roast potatoes, you, you brush them with oil and put them in the oven. You don’t sit them in it and goose fat and let them fry. Yeah, so it’s, it is things like that sometimes around you don’t actually need some of the cooking techniques that you imagine you have, you know, you built up over the years and think, Oh, I must have a roast potato that’s in goose fat or, you know, that you can at least just bobs above the fat as it’s cooking away in the oven. You can brush it with oil and just put it in. I think it’s around looking at those. In fact, I enjoyed the challenge in one way.

I couldn’t swim much at first, couple of lengths and that sort of thing but like the jogging, it develops, and it develops, and it develops. Now that swimming started round about 60, early 60s. I’m now 86 so I’m going back twenty-five years.

And now I swim every day. Every lunchtime, not today. Every lunchtime I go for the swimming in the local baths and from that, beginning where I said I did the length and maybe two lengths. At Christmas that had just gone, the bath, normally the baths aren’t open now for adult swimming so you can’t do an awful lot but at Christmas they were open all the time.

And I, and I just went in and I thought, I’ll see how many lengths I can do. I was by that time, by last Christmas, in the habit of doing about thirty or forty lengths in an hour. About a minute a length, you know, that, that sort of thing, which quite pleased with it. But on this particular day at Christmas of last year, I’ll see how far they can go and believe me or believe me not, I swam a length for every year of my age. In other words, I swam 85 lengths

Wow.

and I was so proud of that.

Yeah, I’ve lost a stone and a half since I started a sleep apnoea mask and it just was magic. It was it was [sighs] I don’t know how it works but I wasn’t starving all the time, when I started wearing this mask. So it’s, I got a really good night’s sleep. I slept sort of at least eight hours a night but concentrated. I wasn’t so tired during the day so I could do more. The, I mean the MS fatigue was still there but it wasn’t the complete dragging, [sighs] you know, the complete every day, every bit of the day. It was it really helped a lot and I managed to lose a stone and a half. I just wasn’t hungry at night times. I wasn’t hungry. I ate less during the day. I ate a lot less at night. I didn’t crave the carbohydrates. I didn’t crave bread. I didn’t buy bread. I was fine. It was so encouraging it was brilliant.

Absolutely, there’s no hundred per cent but everybody who knows me, family, friends, they said to me, Oh wow, what’s happened and I’ve said, Well since I’ve started taking steroids and medication I’m just, this is what I look like and anybody that takes steroids it happens to us all, we get this face, this moon face effect. And I said to them, What it is, is your body tries to store fat in other places so it will shoot to your face, or the back bit of your neck or round your midriff area and unless I’m you know, killing it in the gym, it’s unfortunately is going to, that’s how I have, I have to get used to looking like this because at the moment there’s isn’t going to be a way of me, to be able to burn off that amount, that much amount of fat and that much amount of calories in my, my current physical state, so I’m just noticed I was getting bigger and bigger and when I got to thirteen stone, I was like, I can’t, I’ve got to try and do something. So hopefully, well not hopefully, it has, I have been losing weight. I’m, from 88 kilograms, I’m now 84.2.

Okay.

So, I have lost, I’m quite happy with it because it means that I’m losing. So long as I’m not gaining, I don’t care, I don’t mind. I didn’t want to get any further than 88 kilograms.

And this is just by controlling what you eat
Yeah.

ecause you can’t

Because I can’t exercise, so that just shows you, just simple changes in your diet can actually, can actually help because I’m, I’m no way going to be able to run on a treadmill [laughs]. I know, I know this until they come up with a plan that can get me off these medications, the most I’m going to be able to do is swim and I’ve have to be an Olympic swimmer to be able to shift all this weight in a set amount of time.

Do you have those, do you still have those hunger pangs or

No luckily, I fought damn hard with the consultants to bring my steroids down.

We’re trying to get it down to five milligrams. We’re at seven, so I feel that I’m heading in the right direction, so long as I, you see the problem is they get frightened because they’re like, Oh, you know, we don’t want you to have another bad asthma attack You know, this one could be the fatal one because that’s what you think, that’s what you know. You don’t know that particular asthma attack could be the one that puts you in hospital so you’re wary of taking your medicines down but I found that since I’ve gone down in my medication, my appetite is starting to kind of normalise itself now.

I have normal hunger pangs [laughs]. I still, I’m managing with protein shakes for breakfast, but I know that I’ve got to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, that’s it and I maybe I’m allowed a snack and that’s it.

So when you are trying to lose weight do you still have those rules that you limit your social life or, or you have changed?

No, no, not my social life now because I’ve got to a point with I think you hit an age where you think, I want to go out. I want to meet people. I want to have fun because we don’t know how long we’re on this earth for, and if I keep saying no to everything I’m never going to, [laughs] never going to enjoy my life,’ So no, I don’t do that anymore. I’ve absolutely stopped that.

Okay, but what do you, what rules do you still have when it comes to?

I will limit what I’m doing like, I’ll go for coffee with friends, but they know I won’t have cake. It is just a coffee. And so I think what I’ve done is, I’ve told more people what I’m doing rather than, so you’ve got hopefully that support. You’ve got the odd people that will try and entice you to have that extra drink or, so I know when I’m going out, I’ll say to somebody, Yes, I will have a bottle of wine with you but I’m only going to have two glasses of it. So you’re going to end up with the rest of it. So I’m pre-empting what I’m doing. So then I know I can go and enjoy my evening without worrying rather than thinking, I’ve got to get there now, what am I going to do, I’ve got to tell these, I’ve got to pretend that I’m not doing it. So now I’m more open with people that I am dieting and I think that is a key to be honest with people that you’re following a plan rather than trying to cope round it, like my family they come over and see me in the school holidays or I go and see them. If they know I’m on Plan, I tell them and then I take my own dinner over. So, whereas, they might go to fish and chip shop, I’ll have my own food and enjoy it and that seems to work. I think it’s telling as many people as you can rather than trying to hide it.

I think as you get older you do get more confident. I think you’re, when you’re younger you’re embarrassed that you’ve got to do this plan. You’re embarrassed that you’ve got to tell people and then you hit an age where you think, Who cares. It’s my life.

Why, why were you embarrassed?

I think just sort of admitting that I was big. I think it was just admitting and if I had to tell people it was taking, but when I did start telling people I got the support. So it’s like a bit how your mindset works. I was embarrassed to tell people and I didn’t want people to know but when I did, and people could see me losing weight I got more encouragement so it’s finding that time when you’re ready to tell people and you’ve got to be ready. It’s no good you trying to force it, you’ve got, it’s like doing the plan. You’ve got to be ready to do it. If you’re not in the right mindset it won’t work.