Anna's story. A potted history of youthful excess, child birth, extreme shock and simple application.

26.03.2010

Or ... How the founder of Distance Dieters lost 3½ st to turn her own weight around.

Anna Mason is the owner and founder of Distance Dieters. She has been a personal fitness trainer for 25 years, and began Distance Dieters back in 2008. Diet and fitness has pretty much filled her working life (as you might imagine) and here she shares her own personal battle with weight over the years.

I was a skinny teenager, could eat most of what I wanted and in fact didn't give a thought about what I consumed. Then in my late teens and early twenties I discovered pubs, wine bars and night clubs...oops!

I continued eating and drinking whatever I wanted but of course this now included alcohol and late night take aways. And, when I think about it, I was eating greater quantities of bread, chocolate (terribly sweet tooth) and croissants with butter and lime marmalade...yummy!

Speaking of a sweet tooth, my favourite puddings were sticky toffee, banoffee pie and chocolate ice cream - preferably all at the same time. I adored Baileys Irish Cream liqueur and pudding wine... good grief!

During my twenties I was never fat but, looking back, I was sturdy - what my father called 'a farmer's daughter'...charming to both real farmers daughters, who are not at all sturdy, and to me.

Then, in my late twenties, I had my two daughters and gained weight. I gained 4 stones during my pregnancy with my eldest, lost most of it and then, with just a stone to go, I became pregnant with my second daughter. My daughters were born three years apart and it took me the best part of that three years to lose the three stones. After my youngest was born I had two stones to lose to regain my pre-pregnancy weight … but remember, this was simply to get me back to 'sturdy'…

Life continued, as it does. It was hectic with two small children, working full time hours which were arranged into my week in a higgledy-piggledy way to take into account child care and the varied requirements of my clients.

There never seemed to be enough hours in the day to get everything done and, as is so often the case in these circumstances, I put myself bottom of my list of priorities. This meant that I was coaching my clients around losing weight and they were very successful, whilst I was remaining the same size … or at least I thought I was.

Then one day I caught sight of myself in a shop window. Wow, the weight had crept on and I did not like what I saw. What a shock. To be honest I had been avoiding my own reflection for a while. This sighting happened purely by chance and it was a good thing. The image of myself pulled me up short and I realised it was time to do something about it. I jumped on the scales and I was, wait for it, 13st 2lbs and, at 5' 4'', that was not good. My Body Mass Index (BMI) was 31.6. Yikes!

I knew the weight was edging up slowly. I had been avoiding the reality - we all do for a while. The time had come to help myself lose weight, to do for myself what I was constantly doing for my clients – time to get a bespoke eating plan. So I did just that. I got myself organised, bought all the right foods, recorded my weight and measurements and I kept a food diary. Once I got started it was easy, as I knew it would be. I just needed that nudge to make me make the effort. By 2000 my weight was down to 9st 10lbs and my BMI to 23.3 … and it still is, a decade on.