While it can be daunting to come face to face with how far you have to go to reach your target weight, research shows that slimmers who aim for ambitious goals instead of being “more modest” are more successful.
Hollie Barrett, 30, who dropped from 17st 11lb to 9st 5lb, losing 8st 6lb to become Slimming World’s Woman of the Year 2016, supports aiming high.
She says: “I remember when i first joined Slimming World and was setting my target weight, I told my consultant that i was ‘never going to be one of those girls who’s a size 8’. Without missing a beat, she said: ‘Why not, if that’s what you want you can totally do it! ’ And I did.
“I felt like my weight was holding me back in every aspect of my life, especially when it came to doing things with my kids, ” says mum Hollie, from Blundeston, Suffolk.
“Even things other mums might take for granted, like taking them swimming, seemed off limits because I felt so
self-conscious.
“I once chased my little girl Imogen up the stairs to bed and was so breathless I couldn’t speak properly to read her a book – it broke my heart.
“Now I’m an active mum and I love it. I finally feel like the person – and the mum – I was meant to be all along. If anything keeps my motivation high, it’s that. ”
t
was Oct. 11, 2015, and a middle-aged man and a young woman, both
severely obese, were struggling with the same lump-in-the-throat
feeling. The next day they were going to have an irreversible operation.
Were they on the threshold of a new beginning or a terrible mistake?
They were strangers, scheduled for back-to-back bariatric surgery at the
University of Michigan with the same doctor. He would cut away most of
their stomachs and reroute their small intestines. They were almost
certain to lose much of their excess weight. But despite the drastic
surgery, their doctor told them it was unlikely that they would ever be
thin.
Nearly 200,000 Americans have bariatric surgery each year. Yet far more —
an estimated 24 million — are heavy enough to qualify for the
operation, and many of them are struggling with whether to have such a
radical treatment, the only one that leads to profound and lasting
weight loss for virtually everyone who has it.
Most people believe that the operation simply forces people to eat less
by making their stomachs smaller, but scientists have discovered that it
actually causes profound changes in patients’ physiology, altering the
activity of thousands of genes in the human body as well as the complex
hormonal signaling from the gut to the brain.Over the last year, I
followed Keith Oleszkowicz and Jessica Shapiro — a computer programmer
and a college student — from their surgeries through the transformations
that followed. The operation, increasingly common as obesity threatens
the health of millions of Americans, changes not just the bodies of
those who have it, but also their lives: how they see themselves and how
they relate to their romantic partners, co-workers and families.
As the pounds fell away in a society that harshly judges fat people,
Keith and Jessica, two ordinary Americans, would go through an
extraordinary experience, one that brought both joys and
disappointments.
Jessica, 22, lived with her mother and grandmother in Ann Arbor, Mich.,
and worked at Panera Bread preparing food. At 5-foot-3 and 295 pounds,
she had a difficult life. She needed a seatbelt extender on airplanes.
She was unable to cross her legs. She had acid reflux and mild sleep
apnea, which meant she woke up at night about seven times an hour.
