STRUGGLING to zip up my favourite size 14 jeans, I knew that it was finally time for me to make some lifestyle changes.
No matter how much I breathed in, I couldn’t get them on. I knew I still looked OK but at 5ft 9in and just under 13st, I was officially overweight, I didn’t like my reflection or how I felt.
I was beginning to feel self-conscious when teaching my yoga classes and finding it hard to talk about how great yoga is when I was overweight myself.
I turn 50 in January and I want to look and feel my best.
So in March, I’d started exercising and eating more healthily. But after four months and losing a stone and a half, I hit a wall and my weight loss plateaued.
That’s when I decided to give SlimFast a go.
I remember my mum’s friends using it back in the Nineties, usually as a quick pre-holiday slimming fix, back when flawless supermodels such as Cindy Crawford and Elle “The Body” MacPherson reigned supreme.
SlimFast has had a tricky time of late, though. Sales plummeted by a third in the US last year, believed to be due to the rise of “miracle” weight-loss jabs like Ozempic.
But recently it has become a hit with the TikTok generation, with videos of Gen Z SlimFast fans clocking up in excess of 20million views.
The diet brand’s latest ads featuring model Kelly Brook and TV star Big Narstie posing up a storm in a tongue-in-cheek rap video spoof had caught my eye on social media.
Kelly always looks amazing, so perhaps a couple of weeks sipping shakes could be just what I needed to shift those stubborn remaining pounds.
SlimFast’s 1-2-3 plan recommends you have one “sensible” meal, two meal replacement shakes, smoothies or bars, and three snacks per day.
Each shake contains around 227 calories, 23 vitamins and minerals and 14g of protein.
It sounded convenient and, crucially, doesn’t involve lots of cooking or meal prep. But I still had pretty low expectations, I assumed the shakes would taste grim and that I would be starving most of the time.
How wrong I was. The chocolate and cafe latte varieties were both deliciously creamy and simple to make. You just mix two scoops of powder into skimmed milk and stir. I used a whisk, to avoid any lumps.
I had a shake in the morning then at lunch I’d have something like jacket potato with tuna and sweetcorn, or skinless chicken breast air fried with a few new potatoes — skipping the oil and butter.
Then I’d have another shake in the evening.
A lot of the time I didn’t need more than that and rarely felt hungry.
But on the days when I was teaching a lot, I’d have a snack, either a caramel and chocolate SlimFast bar which has 99 calories per bar, or a handful of berries.
The results were pretty awesome.
I lost 4lbs in the first week, giving me the extra push I needed.
By day ten, I’d lost 5lbs and it didn’t even feel as though I was trying.
By day ten, I’d lost 5lbs and it didn’t even feel as though I was trying
For me, this weight loss is all about giving myself a fighting chance as I approach my sixth decade.
Both my parents died in their fifties and although neither of their deaths was because of their size, I’ve always been conscious of the importance of being healthy.
I realised the extra weight was also having an impact on the clothes I wore.
I had some dresses that hadn’t seen the light of day for years and found myself reluctant to have my photo taken from certain angles.
Even my face, which is naturally full, looked plumper in pictures.
As a yoga teacher, I did enough exercise and although I wasn’t overeating I regularly ate the wrong things.
I would snack on Cadbury Dairy Milk bars or eat around six biscuits a day. I also love curry and as well as making my own each week, I’d go out for one each month.
So, with my weight being the highest it had ever been, I started tracking what I was eating on the MyFitnessPal app and reduced my calorie intake to between 1200 and 1400 a day.
The weight started coming off at an average rate of 2lbs a week.
By the beginning of July, I’d lost a stone and a half, bringing me down to 11st 7Ibs.
I still had another 3lbs to lose to be the weight I was before I had my daughter. It’s only taken me ten years to lose the baby weight.
But it felt unachievable.
I’ll only do it for five days a week so I won’t miss out on weekend dinners with family
It was in shifting those remaining few pounds that SlimFast really helped. It has its downsides, though.
Despite being convenient during the week, weekends were harder. On Fridays, I usually enjoy dinner out at the pub with my husband Paul, 55, who works in insurance, and our children Zak, 18, and Lexi, ten.
And because I teach most evenings, I had to take the ready-made bottles with me as I couldn’t make up a shake up at the studio.
At £10 from Amazon for six, they are pretty pricey.
The cans of powder cost £8 for 16 meals, so in two weeks I spent £26 on cans and bottles of shakes, as well as buying a box of six SlimFast bars for around £3.
I also missed eating proper meals and I’m usually a stickler for five portions of fruit and veg a day but it’s hard to do that on the plan because I didn’t feel I could fit that much into my one meal and I rarely had the additional snacks.
The shakes are apparently nutritionally balanced, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence I developed one of the worst colds I’ve ever had while on this diet.
It also my social life as so much revolves around meeting friends for coffee or going for meals.
But, in the short term, SlimFast is convenient. I’d recommend it if you want to kickstart a weight-loss regime or trying to lose weight but have hit a wall.
I am planning on continuing with the plan as I want to be the weight I was before I had kids, which is just under 10 stone.
But now I’ll only do it for five days a week so I won’t miss out on weekend dinners with family.
THEN
NOW
