“I went on holidays this summer and when I looked at the photographs, I thought, ‘Now that’s me.’ It’s been a long time since I felt that way. It’s totally changed my life.”
Life for me has always been very busy. I mind young children and have three children of my own and they need to be brought to school and collected & brought to their after school activities. I’d be racing to get the dinner on and then I’d hit a brick wall because I had no energy left.
My kids play Gaelic football and when I’d bring them to training, I’d sit in the car. I’d see people out walking or on the pitch and think, I’d love to do that, but I was just too tired and I felt terrible in myself. I avoided walking because I was overweight, I thought people would be looking at me. So I found myself in that vicious circle of just getting up, working, watching television in the evening and then going straight to bed at night. I was in a rut. I wasn’t eating badly but I was eating way too much.
Then I got a phone call from one of the guys in the GAA club, asking if I’d be involved in the management of a ladies’ team they were setting up. My first thought was, ‘I can’t do that. I’m not running across a pitch and have everyone looking at me.’ I have an underactive thyroid and a B-12 deficiency, so I regularly get my bloods taken and the day after I got that call, I had by bloods drawn and discovered my cholesterol was slightly raised. So I went, ‘Okay, cop yourself on.’ I realised I was talking myself out of doing something I would have loved to have said yes to – the Gaelic football gig. I didn’t want to go down the road of having to take tablets for my health. I was already on medication for a hernia – that was enough. I just said to myself, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’ I just got to a stage where I knew something had to give, that my health was going down the wrong path.
I was talking to my friend, Paula, and told her I was thinking of joining Unislim, that I had to take control of my weight, and she said she’d join with me. We joined on the 17th of September 2022. I knew I had to change my mindset, but the plan really suited me. I’d still have my dinner with the family, I make sure to have my veg, my lean meat, and now they’re all eating the same as me. I’m eating a lot more fruit and vegetables. I’m probably eating more now than I did, it’s just different foods. I’m never hungry & I know to plan in my snacks because if I know I’ll avoid feeling hungry later.
I’ve gone from avoiding exercise to walking 5km every day. Hail, rain or snow, I don’t care anymore – I won’t let that stop me. And I train with the senior ladies twice a week. There’s no more sitting in the car while my kids are at training.
It does help having Paula beside me. We never skip a class. That’s one thing I would say, even if you’ve had a bad week – especially if you’ve had a bad week – always go to the class. The leaders are brilliant. Paula and I would often be talking on the way to class about what we might have struggled with that particular week and then we’d be sitting in the class and their talk always seems to be exactly why you slipped up that week. There’s a great relationship there with the leaders, and that helps. You just take it one week at a time, one day at a time.
I have loads of energy now. My cholesterol has come down, I’m no longer on the tablets for my hernia. The big thing for me is, before, I didn’t like looking in the mirror. It wasn’t me looking back. I went on holidays in August and we had photographs printed and when I looked at them I thought, ‘Now that’s me.’ It’s been a long time since I felt that way about a photo of myself, probably my wedding photographs, taken 24 years ago, Unislim has totally changed my life.
When you embark on a journey like this, the first step is to get through that door. And then you realise you’re not on your own, we’re all in the same boat. There’s no judgment, everyone is a friend. And what you need to do is get to that class and stay after the weigh-in for the talk. And pick up the book every now and again because you can think you know everything but we do tend to forget so it’s good to look back and refresh. And try different things – you’ll be amazed what foods you might like. And then it’s all in the right direction after that. Paula and I have signed up to do a 5k run to mark our one-year anniversary being in Unislim. We’ve come a long way!
