This Nurse Ditched Takeout for Home-Cooked Meals and Shed 70 Pounds in Her 50s
English nurse Heather Gibson had tried to lose weight for years on end, but in her early 50s, her scale read 215 pounds. As much as she enjoyed takeout dinners with her family and bottles of wine during the weekend, Gibson’s weight was making her miserable. Gibson, who is now 54, opened up to WomansWorld.com about how she quite literally lifted the extra weight off her shoulders after being tired of complaining and doing nothing but stay home all the time.
“I’d be like, ‘I shouldn’t be going out eating, because that’s why I am like I am,'” Gibson said.
Even when her husband and daughters wanted to take her out, she wouldn’t join them because she felt so depressed about her weight. On top of her negative emotional state, it didn’t help that she also needed to be on two blood pressure tablets and that her skin was not at its best. But the routine she was stuck in finally changed one day at work when she heard her fellow employees talking about Slimming World, a UK-based weight-loss program now available in the United States.
(Photo Credit: Heather Gibson)
The creative recipes that Slimming World offered are what caught her attention. The program included tasty-sounding (and healthier) versions of common takeout foods, which at that point had become a staple of her diet. She did some more research on the program and found a group that met in a location close to her. So, she decided to jump at the opportunity. That was in 2015.
With the assistance of helpful consultants and detailed meal plans, Gibson began to slowly but surely swap all her unhealthy choices for healthier ones. Rather than order fattening takeout meals, she used the program’s suggested recipes to create her own versions at home using “loads of vegetables” and rice, as well as Slimming World’s fries, which were much healthier than traditional fries. She took a liking to fruit, and stopped drinking all that wine on the weekends.
“Following the plan is so easy,” she said. “It’s not like a diet, it’s literally just changing the way that you eat and looking at food differently, which is what I’ve done.”
And she was so successful at it that she actually changed her goal weight three times during her weight-loss journey, originally thinking she’d want to lose 56 pounds. By the time a year had passed, she had lost 70 — and she’s kept it all off since then.
(Photo Credit: Heather Gibson)
She still continues to prepare the healthy recipes and meet with the same group of likeminded people that supported her from the beginning. And now, the woman who used to stay at home all the time loves going out for nice walks and shopping trips with her family.
“It’s hard to understand how different I feel now,” she said. “But I’m just so much happier and much more confident.”
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