Shits, Farts and instant boil dust: my weight loss journey reads like a comical horror story!

You know me, but not really my back story or where I am coming at weight loss from.

Allow me to introduce myself. Yes, we may already have some connection through social media or the classes I offer, but today I want to share with you a deeper glimpse into my personal journey, filled with trials, tribulations, and a fair few disasters.

My own experiences with weight loss have shaped me into who I am today and have fueled my passion for helping others. Believe me, I understand how it feels to navigate the challenges and frustrations that come with weight loss because I have walked in your shoes

Have you eaten dust, tried eating a baby food or brought a Wondercore shape your waist? I have! 

Let me take you back, right back to when I was a child.

As a child I did an awful lot of sport. I skated three times a week, I swam once a week and I was part of the synchronized swimming team. I was really lucky, my mum had a job at a sports centre and with it we got all the free fitness. So I threw myself into everything and body image wasn't a thing for me. I didn't care.

But then, when I hit my miserable teenage years, I stopped it all. I walked away from everything and I ate.

Like, I ate all the time. I'd come home from school and have a sandwich and bowl of cereal on top of lunch, dinner and snacks. I ballooned. I remember being 16 and having to go and buy my last year's school uniform and having to buy adult sizes rather than kid sizes because I was large, really large.

When I started college though, everything changed again. I became more active. In the group I hung out with I was a girl among four boys, NO! not like that! They were like big brothers.

But we had loads of fun. We were just active. We went out. We did stuff. We climbed trees. We *coughed* underage drunk. It was just a brilliant time. And again, the weight then shed off me.

I had big boobs, great legs, a big bum, and I wish I could go back to myself back then and tell myself how awesome my body was. I loved going out in tiny denim skirts, Jane Normal bag slung over my bare shoulder in a backless top getting down to Christina Agrularia "Dirty" waving my WKD in the air - Where are my other 00's Litten Tree Basingstokers?

However, as I crept later into my twenties, everything changed.

Weight gain got me! Life less to all those smug 20 somethings - it gets you! 

I wish I could go back now and not settle down as quick as I was and just have fun with life, but I didn't and the weight just started to creep on and creep on.

I got a desk job, became more sedimentary again and I started looking for different ways to lose weight.

My very first experience of weight loss was when I was temping in a graphics job, and I remember the women there had a Weight Watchers CD-ROM, hands up for my CD-ROM people back in the noughties!!

They were sharing the CD-ROM that had the Weight Watchers point counting diet on it and I got a copy and tried to count points of what I ate.

Now I lasted less than a day because I realised that the honey and mustard chicken tonight jar of sauce was not on there, therefore I couldn't point it and I didn't continue.

My weight loss journey pretty much went on and on like this.

For chuckles I am going to give you a list of all the different diets that I have found and tried over the years: it's just a disaster.

• Thanks for an article in the Closer magazine. My friend and I decided the baby food and teaspoon diet thanks to Jennifer Anderson. The jars of food were absolutely grim back then and there was certainly no Ella's Kitchen, so we absolutely did not continue with that one.
• Then we tried the cayenne pepper drink diet thanks to Beyoncé. Again, back then you couldn't really get hold of cayenne pepper drink easily (I can't actually remember the name of the diet)
• I tried tomato diet - eat nothing but and slowly add in food groups over the weeks. I am allergic to tomatoes so you see the issue?! I substituted them with potatoes with out thinking of the calorie content. Needless to say one week later, potatoes out and fed up, I gave up.
• I tried the grapefruit diet... NOPE! HATE grapefruit and couldn't even swallow it.
• I have tried the cabbage soup diet. That was a delight. Ex-husband really thanked me for that one because I just stunk all the time from farting.
• Shortly after that, I tried Adios slimming pills. Again, didn't work too well. I shit myself, A LOT. Not sure if it's the cabbage or the fact that diet pills are really, really bad for you.
• I had a friend whose wife was doing a Slimming World diet, and at the time it was red days and green days. You ate certain foods on certain days. So, one day he sat down at work and told me all about it. I gave it a try. And it was all well and good for 24 hours until my mum gave me pork chops and potatoes for dinner, which apparently you couldn't eat at the same time. So, well, that was that one done.
• I've drunk diet protein shakes for breakfast and lunch before just one meal a day at dinner time. God lord kill me, my teeth felt redundant and unloved! 
• The best yet has to be when my husband and I wanted to lose weight for our wedding. We paid into a subscription for dust The Exante diet. Just like the 1:1 Cambridge diet. Yep! Bags of dust that you added boiling water too for syrup pancakes, "meaty" spag bowl or cottage pie. It was rank, like actual rank. One of the packets had you mixing this concoction before rolling it out like a pathetic sausage shape on a baking tray for "no bread" sausage sandwiches. We lasted 14 days and threw it out, we did lose a stone but this pretty much due to starvation and dodgy guts - probably the sausages! 

Oh and lets not forget the exercise phases:

I literally tried it all. And this isn't taking into account all the exercise, fads, and equipment that I tried.

• I've taken up spinning, I've done pole dancing, I've got a swim membership that lasts for a week, I've had the free gym membership through my college, which again, I probably used twice. Not to mention being a gym member at probably EVERY gym in Basingstoke through out the years.
• I have done the couch to 5K, Couch to 10k, Great South Run, London to Brighton oh on that note I have got numerous bikes, which to my credit I have used a lot of.
• I have owned a WonderCore, the Crosstrainer, a treadmill, and a rowing machine at various points in my life, all of which make marvelous clothes sources if you're ever looking for one.
• I have attempted Shaun T's Insanity, other than throwing my back out and sweating out of areas I didn't even know I could sweat from I gave up. I think I lost my tick off achievement calendar on day 13 so decided it was time to give up. 
• I brought a hoola hoop at the promise of a toned core and waist line, bruises! Thats what you get love, bruises. No toned core, bruises. 
• Oh the trampette was fun, 6 weeks postnatal and a wet feeling "down there" because post c-section I clearly was not ready (no was I qualified as a postnatal PT at this point - I may add) the trampette was kicked to the charity shop. 

SO lets just say, something pretty big had to change and change it did. 

But this leads me more on to the present day and let me take you back to lockdown, that marvelous time in our life - said firmly tongue-in-cheek - that changed everything for everyone.

My neighbour, her husband and her daughter, my mother-in-law and my best mate were all doing the Slimming World Diet and they were losing quite a lot, so I decided to give it a go.

I did everything by the book. I ate chicken all throughout the day, I ate "free" food pasta, eggs and all the meat with mountains of vegetables & salad.

The first week I gained two pounds but still stuck with it. by the end of six weeks, having said no to takeaways, to magnums, to eating with my kids, anything fun, all the cakes that we baked in lockdown, I had gained nearly a whole stone and I was miserable.

Let me tell you, I was so fed up, I had tried my hardest, I had gained weight rather than lost weight and I was fed up, fed up of missing out, really fed up.

But Vicky, I hear you say, are you not a personal trainer and know all about nutrition? Well yes, I am a personal trainer and I'm bloody good at what I do, but I never used to pay attention to nutrition until now.

I was very much in the mindset that the government-recommended weight loss diets is Slimming World or Weight Watchers. So if anyone ever asked me, I told them to look at that, because you kind of believe government-recommended, therefore they must be good for you. So no, back then, nutrition wasn't my thing.

Enter Vanessa! 

During lockdown I got to know an awesome business coach, personal trainer, and body transformation coach called Vanessa who's now one of my closest friends.

I said to Vanessa, what am I doing wrong? I'm trying so hard, why can't I lose the weight?

And she said simply asked me, are you calorie counting?

ER no! I didn't have time for that!

Vanessa told me to go away and eat as per Slimming World dictated and count how many daily calories I was roughly ingesting.  So I did just that.

No word of a lie, on average, I was eating nearly a thousand calories over what my daily calorie intake should be each and every day.

In total over a week, I was eating about 7,000 calories more.

That's about 21000 calories a week instead of 14000. 

In context 3500 calories = 1lb of fat. This is where the average of 2lb a week gain came from.

What's more I was missing out on life! My kids, Takeaways, Pizza, magnums, wine... CAKE!! 

I really have waked in your shoes, I know how you feel, how you want to feel and how to help you. 

6 weeks later I lost 2 dress sizes and felt incredible. Nutrition coaching had me hooked! Weight loss is not easy, there is no quick fix or fad; all those silly ideas, celebrity endorced things and the promise of eat all you want "free" food is just pure bollocks! 

My journey ignited my passion for nutrition and stopping people looking at fads, articles and stupid ideas to loose weight.

When somebody sat down and taught me, as Vanessa did, what I needed and how my body worked, the results were seamless, easy and fantastic.

From this I went and did the best nutrition course I've ever come across. I learnt so much. I feel am now so qualified, experienced and so passionate to help others just like you.

You don't need cabbage soup making you fart, you don't need "just add boiling water" dust, you don't need the shits and squits caused by weight loss pills.

You just need somebody to help you realise and teach you a sensible and flexible way to eat all the food you love but still losing weight and feeling great. 

What I love to do. I empower people. I educate people, help mums like you and I feel incredible.

My Mission

I have made it my mission to help mums.

I am that mum. Basingstoke born, bred and live. I have set up my fitness studio, focused on postnatal exercise and giving mums the opportunity work exercise without the need for childcare. But exercise is one small part of the puzzle; exercise leaves us feeling great. I use exercise and a tool to get my mums together and lead into teas biscuits and chit chats. But you can not out-exercise a bad diet and exercise will not lead to weight loss unless you tackle the route of the problem. A mums diet. 

I'll never tell anyone to remove anything from their diet, that leaves to misery; besides my classes end in biscuit munching! 

Take a look at Revive and Thrive, its my weight loss program and I know if you have nodded along to any of this, resonated or laughed out loud then this is for you! 

Find out all about my weight loss programme

Chat soon my love, I am off to inhale chicken fajitas for dinner and a white chocolate magnum chaser.. yep all within my calories too. "diet" friend, no changing, faking or restricting! 

Vicky xx