Diane's Story
As a child I was always one of the tallest girls and in many ways felt myself to be one of the biggest. This combined with a large appetite led to major weight gain through my teenage years. Then the realisation struck that I didn’t need to be that size and I began to follow the fads to lose weight as they came and went. This included the exercise videos, diets with particular food groups, joining aerobic classes and many other fruitless activities. Then I was introduced to the idea of training with weights by my brother who had significantly lost fat and gained muscle around that time. He was a member of New Physique and had received helpful advice there. I joined up as a member and was taken through a training programme as part of my induction. I managed to attend every week and tried to lose weight through weight watchers. At first I lost some weight and felt better for doing the exercise but as I progressed and needed more support I found that the weight watchers classes were tailored to the ‘majority’ who were young mums losing baby weight or older people with sedentary life-styles, whom I had nothing in common with at all. It was at this point that I became disillusioned with my diet and the old habits crept back in. To my surprise, far from the empathy and solutions I was expecting to receive from my Weight watchers leader I was ‘told off’ and some what shunned! After this negative experience I decided that I could effectively feel bad about my weight gain without the need to pay for someone else to belittle me. I continued to train at the gym and tried to diet on my own, hoping that I would be able to get some results by myself. Needless to say I made little progress and became frustrated with the whole thing. Gradually I gained weight again through comfort eating.
"The breakthrough came when I spoke to John Thomson"
The break through came when I spoke to John Thomson about personal training and I concluded that this would give me the support and guidance I needed to achieve my goals. We began by looking at my history of diet and exercise. We also discussed my aims for the personal training and established realistic short term goals. A tailored diet plan was drawn up to include foods that I would be able to eat within my busy schedule each day and I decided that training four times a week with support would be the way forward.
"The results have been amazing"
The results have been amazing I have never had results that are so good with any other diet or exercise plan. I have lost weight, toned up and grown in confidence developing a far more positive self concept that has helped me to achieve goals in other areas of my life that I would not have considered possible before. In addition to the diet and training advice I now see each of the sessions as a form of therapy in which I am able to discuss emotive issues in my life, in confidence, which have had an impact on my diet and motivation in the past. In addition to my dieting achievements I have also stopped smoking and now consider myself to be a non-smoker which I feel has been made possible through the support I have received. I regularly receive positive and constructive feedback on my progress through discussions and weigh-ins so I always feel supported and I have thankfully never received anything other than encouragement, advice and motivation from New Physique.
Diane Larkin