About Nicky

I’m a divorced mum of two. My 19 year old daughter has just left home to go to university and my 13 year old son is at grammar school. Great kids with great sense of humour and I am very lucky to have them. Although I have been divorced for nine years, I am very much supported with the children by my ex-husband so I consider myself very lucky.

I also have good support from close friends (one of whom I work with) and family. My mum (bless her) gave up smoking after 50 years(!) and consequently put on weight. She has serious health problems with asthma and arthritis but has been nagged to come to the gym with me and is starting to see some benefits. My dad had a stroke 14 years ago but still comes to my house each day with my Mum and does bits of gardening and looks after my dog, Molly. So not only do I have a lovely garden to sunbathe in, I also don’t need to worry about my dog in the daytime. I don’t know what I would do without them.

I work full time in a school as a Headteacher’s PA which is a very busy occupation.  Unfortunately I have to work the school holidays – so it’s not the easy job everyone thinks it is! The people I work with are fantastic and I am very happy in my job. There is never a dull moment and I am constantly busy which I love. I had a job a few years ago which was so dull that all I had to do all day was eat!

My day before I lost weight would mean getting up at the last minute, going to work, coming home to a convenience dinner and getting my daughter to walk the dog before I collapsed in front of the TV. At weekends I would rush about to get the housework done so that I could sit down and sleep the afternoons away. Now I am up before 6am walking Molly before going to a job I love. Most days I now walk the 20 minutes each way to work and I often walk for 20 minutes with my friend Lisa during the lunch break. After cooking dinner, I will walk Molly again and 2-3 times in the week I will go to the gym. At weekends I walk for at least two hours come rain or shine at a local nature reserve. I call it my happy place and whereas before it was a chore it’s now a hobby and I feel restless if I can’t get there.

Tell us about when you have gained weight and what you think the reasons were

I was a stereotypical fat person. I have always been a yo-yo dieter and had lost weight before through Weightwatchers, but this year I got to the heaviest I had ever been. I gave up smoking in 2005 and never got over the hand-to-mouth habit. I did it by myself and now realise I should have got help to do it properly! I was also in a bad relationship so I turned to food as my comfort. The relationship consequently broke down but I continued to eat. Chocolate and most things sweet were my vice.

How has being overweight affected your lifestyle? Do you feel it has stopped you from doing things?

Being overweight totally rules your life. I am quite a confident person, but being so overweight made me want to hibernate. Friends would invite me out, but I always had an excuse – can’t leave the dog (lie), no babysitter (lie), doing something else (lie – I never did anything!). The truth was I didn’t want to be seen.

As a consequence of being overweight I really feel like I had no life.

I once had an argument with a van driver blocking a road near me. He said if I walked then maybe I wouldn’t be so fat. I laughed at him at the time but I was mortified and it stayed with me. After all, he had a point! But why would I walk when I could hide away in the car? 

What has motivated you to lose weight?

Wanting to live life and have fun! I knew I was overweight – I knew I wanted to lose weight, but I just couldn’t get the motivation. I wanted to walk  my dog for more than 10 minutes without getting back ache, I wanted to go to parents’ evening and not feel sorry for my poor kids having a fat mum, I wanted to go out with friends and have fun and not feel that everyone was gawping at how ugly and fat I was.

I took my dog to the vet in January 2009 and he told me off as she was 3kg overweight.  I tried to convince him that she was exercised – well it was the truth – but obviously I was not exercising her enough and was feeding her too many titbits. Anyway she was put on a diet and I felt I had let her down. My children eat healthily most of the time for teenagers, as I know all there is to know about wrong and right foods. I just never followed my own advice and now I had let my poor dog down by allowing her to get fat and unhealthy like me. I felt like a criminal standing in the vet surgery and he obviously didn’t believe me. Well why should he? Fat owner = fat dog.

I don’t know where the motivation finally came from. I simply woke up one Sunday – 23 Feb 09 – and decided that it was today I would make the change. Not tomorrow (started too many cliché diets on a Monday and failed by Monday night). There was no divine inspiration I’m afraid. I decided I wasn’t going to diet – I was going to get fit and healthy. And I did!

How has the The Biggest Loser Club helped you with your weight loss? What tools and resources online have been the most useful to you?

Oh my god, thank you for the BLC. This site has been fantastic in every way possible. If you go to a slimming club meeting you have to go at a certain time of the day and week.  The BLC is 24/7 to suit you and it’s half the price!

Apart from the home page with all the weight loss related articles, Biggest Loser Club works out all the calories for you once you have entered your height, weight and target weight loss per week. The food diary really helps you keep a track of what is going in to your mouth each day. Recipes are good for inspiration – it can get boring if you don’t try different foods and I think it would be easier to give up if you feel deprived. Then you get to see your results on a graph on your results page.

The greatest help is the Biggest Loser community. What an absolutely fantastic bunch of people! Not only do you get tips and ideas from the others on how to lose weight, you also get whatever support you need from the members and Helpteam. They are there for you through all the highs and lows. Even if you didn’t feel like posting messages, just to be able to read what they are all up to is really motivational. Some of the people on there are legendary! They are real people who are sharing your pain and joy at the same time as sharing theirs. Sounds very cheesy but don’t knock it until you speak to them. If I waxed lyrical about them all day it wouldn’t even begin to explain how great they are.

Getting awards for your successful weight loss is always nice on your profile page and the current Christmas Challenge has boosted me to lose the final few pounds that I originally set my target for. I never joined the buddy scheme, but I know there are other members who found it helpful to them.

Getting to speak to the people on the TV show was also motivational. It made them real people rather than strangers on the telly. Kevin’s blogs are inspirational. 

What changes have you made to your/your family's cooking, shopping and eating habits?

Well, I try to only go shopping once a week which helps; you don’t have temptation in your way too much! I used to go to the local supermarket each day and of course I spent a fortune and always came away with a ‘treat’ for the evening. I found the key is to be organised and know roughly want you want to eat all week and shop from a list. I eat far more fruit and vegetables and actually enjoy them! I also know I have to eat regularly. I have snacks mid morning and afternoon or by lunch or dinner time I will eat too much too quickly.

• I will look at calorie content of everything before buying it – and you quite often find you can make a lower calorie substitution.
• I don’t go without ‘junk food’ – I have my own recipe for cheeseburgers and Kentucky style chicken which my kids absolutely love too.
• I think before I eat, whereas before I just ate! 
  

Example of typical meal before your weight loss journey?

A typical meal before my weight loss journey would have been a full fat sausage and mash but no veg, fish fingers and oven chips or a ready meal.
Example of typical meal now?

A typical meal now would be low fat sausages with half potato and half swede mash plus mixed veg, own recipe Kentucky style chicken with home-made potato wedges and salad or roast chicken breast with skinny roast potatoes and veg.

What changes have you made to your level of activity? What exercise do you do? How often do you workout/train?

Oh god – a total change! A 10 minute walk was torture on my back and joints. Walking the dog was a chore I couldn’t wait to finish – or get someone else to do it. Now I walk the dog for 30 minutes at 6am, then walk to work most days – 20 minutes uphill there and 20 minutes back. I add in a 15-20 minute walk at lunch as long as it’s dry, and then walk Molly again in the evening. This can range from 30 minutes to 90 minutes depending on the time I have. I go to the gym once or twice in the week, straight from work, and then meet a friend there at 8am every Sunday morning, which boosts me to work harder as he has been going for years and is very fit. I swim, do yoga classes, and at weekends I take Molly to the nature reserve for about two hours on both days in addition to her normal walks. I think I am addicted to fresh air!

What is the most effective exercise you have adopted for calorie burning?

Walking! This was all I did for the first 5 months. When I started I had a pedometer and I worked up to walking 70,000 steps per week. I set myself a 16 week target based on walking the recommended 10,000 steps per day and I managed to beat it by over 194,000 steps. It seems a bit extreme but it gave me the push to get up and go back out in the evening if I hadn’t quite hit my daily target. It worked for both of us and my dog lost her excess weight in no time!

What difference has losing weight made to how you look and feel, and/or things you do/don't do? Has anyone commented about any changes in you?

I feel much more confident now – I smile more! I go shopping and buy clothes that I like rather than because they may hide a wobbly bit!  I go out with friends and enjoy myself – I feel like I have a life!
I would never have gotten in a swimming costume before – but half way through I thought ‘why not?  Who cares what anyone else thinks?’ As each pound comes off your confidence grows and I am proud of myself so I don’t really care what strangers may or may not think of me. My friends and family are proud of me too and that is what matters.

I also joined the gym and found my preconceptions of it being full of ‘gym-bunnies’ was totally wrong. It’s full of people of all shapes, sizes, ages and levels of fitness and no-one looks twice at anyone else as they are all too busy with their own workout.

People comment on my weight loss all the time now which is lovely, if a bit embarrassing sometimes. I also get asked how I lost weight and when I say good old fashioned diet and exercise they invariably just say ‘oh’ and then lose interest – like there was a miracle cure for being fat!! I did inspire my neighbour to start the Biggest Loser Club though and so far her weight loss has been nearly a stone.

Can you give some other examples of how your life has changed?

I wake up happier every single day. I have always thought I am a positive person, but now I know I am.
I don’t know the last time I had back-ache or joint ache of any kind. I am also off the blood pressure tablets I had started taking and I never get sugar lows. The feeling of being fitter is virtually indescribable. Getting rid of all that fat makes you feel like anything is possible.

I recently went with a friend who is learning to fly a helicopter. On arriving there the instructor said I could go up with them. Well, before I lost weight there is a big chance I wouldn’t have gone in the first place, let alone fitted in to the back of the helicopter!  I would have been too embarrassed to squeeze in or tell the instructor how much I weighed as they have to know your weight to work out fuel. Being short, it was hard to get in by myself and my friend had to help me. I would have been mortified before. Now it was just funny. I had a great time despite the air sickness!

I also helped out on a school trip to a theatre show in the West End. Ending up at Covent Garden tube station, we realised there was a big queue for the lift or climb 193 steps to the top. Before I lost weight I would have had to make everyone wait for the lift and been very embarrassed – there would have been no way I could have climbed those stairs as the stairs at home were a problem. Similarly I would never have had the great day in London with my kids this summer, where we all climbed the 500 odd steps to the Golden Gallery above the dome in St Paul’s Cathedral, as well as walk all over London hopping on and off buses and laughing all day.

Losing weight for me means I can make happy memories for my kids as well as for myself.

Can you give any tips to someone starting out on their weight loss journey?

• Join Biggest Loser Club and get all the weight loss support, hints and tips you can.
• Start today – don’t bother putting it off until tomorrow or next Monday. Be committed and start right now!
• Be nice to yourself! Be selfish as much as you can. It sounds mean but you have to put you first sometimes in order to reach your goal. Your loved ones will benefit from your healthier lifestyle too.
• Set yourself small goals like losing half a stone and then reward yourself with something like make-up or whatever works for you, as long as it’s not food!  This also goes for exercise. Small goals are key – don’t think you can do it all at once.
• There is no such thing as failing or being naughty. If you eat something you feel you shouldn’t have then so what? No-one got hurt by it and you just move on – but don’t use it as an excuse to give up! 
• Try walking and use a pedometer.
• Be honest with your diary – you are only cheating yourself.
• Take all the support you can get from fellow dieters and from your family and friends, but remember you are doing this for you.
• Take photo’s along the way – you may not want to see them now but you will once you reach your goal.
• Put a graph on your fridge!
• Nothing tastes as good as being fit feels.
• Enjoy life as you go – don’t wait until you lose weight to live your life. You have to be happy NOW and who cares what anyone else thinks!

 

Using The Biggest Loser Club Nicky has achieved fantastic Weight Loss success. If you want to learn how to eat, how to move and how to lose weight, join the Biggest Loser Club today and start feeling fabulous.