And then see, you know, you weigh yourself or you feel better, or you don’t feel so full or, you know, your clothes fit a bit better or something. And the strange thing is although I’ve lost quite a bit of weight I’m still wearing the same dress, still wearing the same size clothes. they’re fitting me looser, but I’m still wearing the same size clothes. I can get into a smaller size now, but I’ve got used to enjoying having all that extra. I’m so pleased to put on a dress and find there’s all this extra space that I don’t want to go down to a smaller size. It sort of, it, it gives me a great boost to see my clothes loose, you know, [laughs] not fitting properly.

That’s very interesting.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes, rather than go down to a smaller size, I’m, which is maybe just fits right and maybe makes me feel a bit, you know, Oh and perhaps I should lose a bit of weight,’ I’ve put on my big clothes that I’ve worn and they’re big and then I can see, oh gosh you look so much, you feel so much better and you feel better when you lose weight. You can move better. I walk faster. If feel, I don’t feel so, you know, it’s such an effort. You realise after you’ve lost weight, God it was such an effort with all that weight, walking from a to b. You don’t realise what an effort it is when you’ve got extra weight on you. it’s only when you lose it that you realise how you can walk more freely. You can feel your hips moving when you walk. Not just your knees wobbling along, you know. It, it’s the whole feeling of, and that feeling, I enjoy that feeling. I find that very rewarding, just that feeling of being upright and pulling, you know, having a stomach that doesn’t stick out and I always used to look, and my stomach always stuck out further than my bust and now when I stand up it doesn’t. My bust sticks out more and its little things like that that are rewarding for me I mean from the vanity point of view it’s rewarding but from the mere physical freedom point of view of being, of being able to move more easily. Feel my hips move as I walk, instead of just wobbling along on my knees. it’s just that freedom that I enjoy so much.

So there is a kind of emotional boost?

Yes.

Less tired. Yeah, I don’t, I have more energy, you know what I mean, and losing the weight I can actually, you know sit down, like I can do my laces and I feel like I can run to get the train, you know, I feel, you know, much more energetic, you know, like that.

And this has been just within the last six months?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

How were you feeling before?

Yes, yes definitely. I mean, you know, when you’re climbing the stairs, you know, I feel, Oh I’m tired and, you know, my belly is all up here. You know I do have a belly here, the baby weight and I don’t know how I’m going to go back. Yeah I feel frustrated and, and heavy, [sighs] you know, like slow not able to walk, you know, fast. Maybe not being able to get my train on time, you know what I mean, I used to run and say, Oh no But now I can probably leave my daughter and then maybe run, you know, probably not all the way to the train but I can run fast and manage to get my train.

So how do you feel again emotionally to, to have been able to achieve this?

Yeah, I mean yeah, I mean I feel very proud and, and, and happy. You know, I was like, Okay, I’m on the right track, you know what I mean. I can, I can do more, and it will be great for me, you know, if I would be able to run faster having the, you know, the strength to do more things. I think like great about it.

Fortunately, my diabetes and my blood pressure both came under control with drugs and I also started monitoring, personally, my own blood pressure and blood sugar levels regularly and it didn’t take very long for me to work out myself that some foods were bad for me and also both the diabetes and the blood pressure were related to my weight so I started to try to reduce my own weight with some success but not an overwhelming amount of success but I did certainly notice for myself that, when I was able to reduce weight, it improved my control of both my blood sugar and my blood pressure and that’s largely been the situation ever since. I continue to monitor my weight. I continue to monitor my blood pressure and my blood sugar and, over time, I found out what things are worse for me. I find diet, I, my weight hovers between overweight and obese. I mean, as far as my body mass index is concerned I’m hovering between overweight and obese. And certainly, certainly it is clear that, if I am able to reduce my weight, it improves my general feeling of well-being, if you see what I mean.

I decided that at the age of forty-nine that I had to something about this, not to make me look any different just to, you know, as a health precaution, I knew that I needed to do something. I’d got to that stage where this is just ridiculous. So, we decided that I would go and have this gastric band fitted which I did. I hadn’t even heard of this operation at that stage. A friend of mine visited from Australia and apparently it quite common over there so we did that.

When I came to from the operation, the doctor came to me and he said to me, it’s a good job you’ve had this operation done today and I said, Why’s that He said, because you’ve got cirrhosis of the liver which really shocked me to the core and I first reaction was, Well, I don’t drink Because I thought you just got that with drinking and he said, No he said, the cause of this, the biggest cause of this is the weight

So, I asked him, I said, Will that ever repair itself Well luckily the liver is the only organ in the body that does repair itself. So after two years I went back for a liver test and it’s absolutely perfect. So that were that. But he also said to me, Had I not had it done that day I would be dead before I were fifty-five

And how does it make you feel to have lost all this weight?

I’m pleased with myself. I’m pleased with myself in the fact I said I was going to do it and I did it. I’m disappointed in myself because I should have done it earlier and I shouldn’t have let it get that far really. I should have been more concerned as the weight was going on but I feel much better for it. I feel much better physically. I know that I was wheezing when I was walking because of the extra weight. That doesn’t happen anymore.

it’s, I mean, we moved to this house because it’s, it’s easier to manage but also the stairs when you’ve lost a lot of weight, you realise how difficult the stairs were. But now that doesn’t bother me. It does with, with me knee, but that’s not something you can’t manage but when you look back at the way sort of I was and the things I couldn’t do. Getting in and out the bath was difficult because of coming up from so low and having knee damage anyway, it was difficult. But we had a walk-in shower put in, so okay, that’s great in the long term but it shouldn’t be the answer in the short term. Yeah.

So I have many times between February and now found myself hovering in the confectionary aisle and just saying, Do I really want to spoil what I’ve achieved because I feel so good about being a good weight. And it’s changed my, my gut in that, you know, instead of being. It’s changed my health. You know, I, You know I. My stools are different. my wind, you know, I’m, flatulence is non-existent and just lots, and lots of things have changed because of this sugar, leaving out the sugar.

So, you know, so once I did start working on my blood sugar level and my portion size and things it started going pretty quickly. People started saying, Oh you look well. And that happened pretty quickly as well. And you know that was, the positive feedback was very positive. And I went to the [Health Centre]. I should say about every two weeks I’ve been in there measuring my blood pressure. So

Ok so

Really to prove Dr [Name] is wrong.

Ok. So when I was eating a lot and I was overweight I was farting a lot and my stomach rumbled a lot. I had this outrageous appetite and very loose stools. So now eating in a much more perceived to be healthy way but particularly without the sugar that’s all under control. I seem to be very, very, sensitive to sugar and digestion.

First, first and foremost, I can move better now that I’ve lost. don’t get me wrong, my walking is really limited. In the house, I’m not bad, it’s all on the flat. Going outside any gradient, you’re up hill or down hill causes me huge problems. Before I could really struggle to get into my car. Now I can probably walk to my car but when I get to my car I’m glad of a seat. What happens when I walk is my two legs feel as if they weigh tons and I find it hard to lift them up and move them and I get pain running mid back down the buttocks down my legs. On the left side it goes right down to the knee. On the right side, it just goes to the thigh. When I sit down the pain goes away. So I what I tend, how I started increasing the amount I walk is [street name] is a great place to walk because there’s lots of benches [laughs]. So I would start from where the disabled parking is to Costa. Have a seat and then I would walk to one bench, have a seat and then I walk to the other bench. Now it took me about three months, but I can, still stopping and starting but I can make it to [shopping centre] which was do you know, I thought, Right, do you know what you’re going to do is one day get down to the front door there,’ which was great.

I started with the weight management doing chair exercises and I then go to a vitality class at the local gym which started on chair exercises but I’m now up to tone, it’s, you do maybe like a twenty minute warm up and it’s very gentle, it’s not and then it’s like there’s seven or eight stations that you do three minutes at and then I slow down, so I’m going to that once a week and that I think’s helping keeping me active. I’m also going to be moving flats, so I’ve had a lot of running about to do. But again, I’m really fortunate because my family and close friends have been really, really good, you know, but that’s probably the journey of the weight loss.

I was on medication by this time and the medication is horrendous and it gives you all sorts of bowel problems and sickness and nausea, so I thought, I’m going to get off this. What can I do?’ So, I started going right through these forums and found that if you go on a low carb, high fat and start exercising, you can actually, maybe reverse or reverse the symptoms. You’ll never reverse it, but you would have to keep this up for the rest of your life, so I find that quite successfully. I lost four stone in maybe a year and I sort of tootling along at that and I was, I was on the cusp of coming off the medication when I had this accident.

So, hopefully I can get back onto that and try and get some of this weight off because I found it when the weight’s off, you can do more. You’ve got more energy and plus I can sleep better. If I can get, if I can get a full night’s sleep, test myself in the morning, my numbers are down drastically, and I think there’s a definite link between the, the amount of sleep you get, good sleep and what your blood sugars going to be.

So that was my aim was to get my blood sugars down and get off the medication and that way I felt like my life would be going somewhere rather than just waiting to die.[laughs]

Okay, so your diabetes control improved?

Oh hugely. I was never really that bad. You know how they do the numbers, I was always around about 8.4 and then they got it down to 6.1 and the one that they say when you’re, you’re not diabetic anymore is 5.9 and I couldn’t get there. I got stuck at 6.1 but it became an obsession to get down, so I was trying to walk more and more and more and then this happened and it just went.