Below is an article written by Liz Kershaw that first appeared in the Telegraph on May 15th, 2023.
I wanted to share it with you as I really resonated with her honesty about losing weight and doing it without dieting. I also wanted to let you know what I was thinking. Therefore I’ve added my thoughts to the text in italics. You’ll read a few paragraphs from Liz, then my thoughts.
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In the UK, 64 percent of adults are now overweight or obese. The NHS is spending billions on treatments for the millions of people with diagnosed conditions directly related to being overweight.

Should the state be paying to repair the damage we do to our own bodies every time we fill our faces? Perhaps instead, we should all be expected to be honest with ourselves, take some personal responsibility, use our common sense, and bring on the determin­ation and willpower.
That’s what I think.

(Ed – There are many reasons for people to become overweight; some argue genetics play a role as humans have evolved to save calories, not expend them; some argue it is hormones, but we have the same genetics and hormones as previous generations, so we need to look closer at the food we eat.  It is designed to be high sugar, high fat, cheap and addictive, so the willpower method is hard, but as we’ll see, it’s not impossible.)

Because I did just that five years ago, and it works. I’m not claiming to have done anything special, unique, or clever. I’ve just been honest with myself. 

Imagine stuffing a rucksack with a bulky nine 4lb bag of potatoes and lugging it around on your back all day and all night. That’s some burden. A real hindrance to mobility that takes its toll on you physically and mentally. You’d be uncomfortable, inconvenienced, exhausted, and miserable. It’s not a good look, either.

But that’s what I was doing to myself five years ago. Not with raw spuds, but nearly 40lb or three stone of fat that had got under my skin for me to carry around.

When I realized that in May 2018, it was such a shock that it instantly changed my self-image, my attitude to food, and ultimately my health and quality of life. The wake-up call was a photo of me smiling obliviously by a pool in a swimsuit. The new one-piece that I’d had to buy in size 18 for my holiday because it was such a stretch to get into last year’s model.

My friend took the snap and handed me her phone – I was horrified at what I saw. My burgeoning belly had meant bikinis were no longer an option, so my thickening torso was all trussed up in a tight Lycra one-piece. There, in the bright French sunshine, my thunder thighs, flabby arms, chubby cheeks, and a deepening crease in my double chin were all laid bare.

I realized I’d actually disfigured myself with food.

(Ed – I’ve not heard people say this before, but it’s an interesting admission of guilt.  For example, let’s say I love extreme sports and injure myself; I would take responsibility for the injury and agree with people if they said I did it to myself.  By contrast, when people overeat and become obese, society has not yet allowed us to say that the damage people cause to themselves is their fault; responsibility is laid at the feet of things like the social economic spectrum, cheap fast food, addictive additives, etc, all these things play a role, but ultimately there is only one person who puts the food in your mouth).

There was nobody else to blame. I’d simply eaten more than I’d burnt up. I hadn’t been pigging out. My body was just using less food as I aged and slowed down. But I hadn’t adjusted my intake. 

My weight (bulk, actually – let’s be honest) had been creeping up slowly since I’d turned 50. It hadn’t bothered me on a day-to-day basis. I was conscious of the folds of fat gradually forming around my middle, but I’d been kidding myself that being tall (5ft 9in), I could cover it up and carry it off. Just pull on some sturdy pants and surrender to the next size up.
But by 2018, the odd pound here and there had mounted up. As I discovered when I got back home, I braced myself and stepped on the scales. I weighed 14½ stone, 203lb, or 92kg. 

I couldn’t fool myself any longer. I was fat. And fed up. I was turning 60 in just under three months, and I was certainly looking older than I wanted to.

Right. I couldn’t actually turn back the hands of time, but I could get a grip and look younger by stopping the rot and damn well turning my life around.

(Ed-Weight gain can be insidious like this.  Especially if you surround yourself with people who are also gaining weight, no one notices until you get some blood work back that says you are pre-diabetic, have high cholesterol, and your BP is borderline high.  That’s the first warning most people get, but really it’s there every day, looking back at you in the mirror.)

For starters, I promised myself I’d be in better nick by my big birthday. At my party, I would be wearing something lovely that I’d left hanging around for years in a wardrobe bulging with beautiful clothes – in three different sizes (12, 14, and 16) that I couldn’t get into anymore. That was my first incentive. 

Then I went to Tesco for inspiration. I wanted to see what the three stones looked like. I made a pile of potatoes. I got some funny looks from shoppers, but that really brought it home to me. And gave me the resolve, the steely determination, and the willpower to take back control.

By July 30, 2018, I’d ditched 18lb (four and a half bags of those spuds), and my red slinky satin dress wasn’t such a squeeze.

By August 2019, I’d slowly but surely (this was not a crash diet) shed 35 lbs (almost nine bags of spuds) and was loving being able to show a (long, toned) leg in a size 12, 1960s-style white mini dress.

(Ed-She mentions it is not a crash diet; that is key. Really it’s about losing weight in a sustainable way that incorporates things like exercise, nutrition, and sleep into your lifestyle).

By January 2020, I was three stone (42lb) down and zipping up my skinny leather biker trousers again. And that’s how I’ve stayed. For five years and counting, I’ve completely changed my attitude to food. I now think of food as what it is. Fuel. I wouldn’t ruin my car by putting any old oily stuff in the tank. I wouldn’t persist in filling it out if it were already full. I wouldn’t store up cans of fuel in the boot, on the back seat or roof, and cart them around with me. So I won’t do it to my body now if I want to keep it running properly.

This doesn’t mean that I’m some kind of smug, miserable food evangelist. I love my food. I love cooking and being cooked for. I spoil myself and others with all the things I enjoy. I just won’t eat or serve rubbish that brings no benefit to body or mind.

I’m never hungry. Even though I only eat twice a day – breakfast (by 10 am), and dinner (by 6 pm) – with nothing in between. I drink a lot of coffee in the morning and tea in the afternoon. With milk. So plenty of calcium and vitamins. I love a glass of wine – but I also drink loads of tap water.

(Ed-There is a big clue here; she only eats twice a day and is never hungry.  This makes sense; think back to why we eat 3 meals a day.  Originally this way of eating might have come about in order for us to get enough food for the manual farm labor or factory jobs that our predecessors had. They needed the extra calories, but our modern lifestyle with all the ‘labor-saving devices’ means we don’t.  Put simply; we eat too much).

I walk a lot. And very fast. But I won’t run. That just pummels and wrecks your joints. And I like a swim.

I get asked all the time whose book I bought or which diet I followed. But I just made it up myself, based on what we were taught in school biology lessons about food groups and nutrition. And on what I learned from my grandma, who taught me how to turn even the cheapest meat or fish and raw, fresh veg into tasty family meals. In her lifetime, due to poverty or rationing, she had to count the cost or points, and so, out of necessity, not choice, family food was simpler and healthier. And none of us was fat. So I went right back to those basics. 

I’ve always cooked meals for me and my children using fresh ingredients. We’ve never eaten ready meals, take­aways, or sugary foods. Like me as a child, they’ve never even wanted chocolate. Easter eggs have been left untouched. Chocolate money in the Christmas stockings has been recycled from year to year but never eaten.

And yet I’d still piled on the pounds. So I worked out that the only thing I could and needed to cut out were all the savory things I love but which fill up a plate and your stomach. They’re full of starch and sugars, which, as I don’t run marathons, I know I can’t possibly use, and so they end up being stored as fat. That’s anything with flour, rice, pasta, potatoes, and bread, for starters. Mostly white and beige food.

And also foods that do you no good and that you just don’t need. Sweet stuff. I never liked it, so not eating sugary breakfast cereals, cakes, biscuits, chocolates, sweets, puddings, fruit, juices, and fruit yogurts is nothing new for me, and I have no sense of deprivation. 

In fact, most factory-processed foods, including ready meals, sauces, soups, and even bread, are packed with sugars and preservatives. So I don’t touch them, either.

(Ed-Luckily, Liz had not developed a taste for ultra-processed foods.  However, the good news is that it doesn’t take long to break the additions.  You only need a week or so without any sugar to realize how sweet everything is.  I recommend my clients do a sugar detox once a year and help reset their taste buds).

I now realize I’m following a low-carb lifestyle as I fill my boots with protein – chicken, steak, lamb, salmon, cod, kippers, prawns, lobster, eggs, and cheese. And loads of veg – spinach, broccoli, asparagus, mushrooms, and tomatoes.

All lovely grub and hardly a hardship. And no, it’s not more expensive because it’s all unbranded and VAT-free. Check your receipt next time you fill your supermarket trolley. You’ll find there’s no VAT on real food. The Treasury knows what we need. They don’t tax real food.

(Ed-This applies to the UK but might also apply to other countries, as she says, check the receipt)

I did it. So can you.

Ed- For me, this article was a breath of fresh air.  There wasn’t any of the usual political correctness of not using the word fat or avoiding blaming people for being fat. She was blaming herself, but that ultimately led her to take responsibility, not looking for a quick fix and making the lifestyle changes necessary for sustained weight loss. As we know, being overweight or obese also comes with an increased risk of comorbidities, so she may have decreased her chance of developing diabetes, Alzheimer’s, high blood pressure,  heart attack, stroke, osteoarthritis, cancer, and mental health problems.  It’s speculative, as we will never know for sure, but this would also alleviate future stress on the medical system, her family, and her finances.  Her decision that day to change her life around might just have been the best decision she ever made. 

Sources:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/liz-kershaw-lost-three-stone-without-dieting-gym/

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03336/#:~:text=Adult%20obesity%20in%20England,BMI)%20of%2030%20or%20above.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/obesity/causes/#:~:text=Obesity%20is%20a%20complex%20issue,in%20the%20body%20as%20fat.

https://www.emetabolic.com/locations/centers/owensboro/blog/crash-diets-can-cause-metabolic-weight-gain/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7721435/

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