Success Story: Rachael

AKA "Rachael Reynolds" on Weight Loss Resources

Weight Loss History

I’ve tried calorie counting before but the only formal “plan” I’ve followed is the F Plan. You certainly don’t feel hungry on it but I sincerely hope never to see another bowl of Fibre Filler again. Did have a book once which recommended 3 days of eating cheese and raisins!

Have you lost weight before and regained the weight?

Yes twice. I regained weight after using the F Plan successfully. That was just a gradual creeping up. The second time was after calorie counting. I’d begun to put the weight back on but was then posted to Baghdad where I spent 9 months eating American food (fat, sugar and more fat!) and then sitting around in the evenings drinking gin – well you couldn’t exactly pop down to the cinema! It was said I had more gin and tonic than anyone else in Iraq! I then compounded it by spending my 6 weeks R&R leave when I came back to the UK drinking more gin, claiming I needed to de-stress. I ended up in August at my heaviest ever.

How being overweight has affected you…

I’m a fairly confident person so I was never unduly bothered about being fat from a social point of view. I’ve never liked shopping anyway and if Marks and Spencer don’t sell it I don’t buy it so didn’t feel particularly limited.

My blood pressure was going up in the year before August which I was putting down to stress but while that may have been a part, I’m sure a good bit of it must have been down to my weight and my lack of exercise.

Conversely, while I never noticed a “lack of attention” while fat, I’ve noticed a lot more attention now I’ve lost a fair bit!

Motivation to Lose Weight

I think I’m like a lot of people, there just comes a moment when you think “enough is enough”. Mine was when a friend sent me some photos of me on a business trip to America (the before picture above – and that isn’t the worst one, I threw those away!). And I wasn’t even at my fattest then. Also I was bursting out of size 16 clothes and while for a while I justified that by saying well the average UK woman is a 14 now, there was no way I was buying a size 18 at my height.

Discovering Weight Loss Resources

I came across the site while looking for a calorie counter. I already had a diet programme for my Pocket PC which has a similar food and exercise diary so I thought I would probably use WLR mainly for the UK food database. But I soon realised it was much more than that. I still use the Pocket PC programme for entering stuff when I’m out and about. Not that I’m obsessed but not only do I complete my food and exercise diaries on WLR but it is all entered on my Ipaq too – doing everything twice! (Can I have extra calories for that please?)

How Weight Loss Resources Helps

The Food and Exercise diaries are obviously the key part and they are brilliant. I’ve counted calories for years and can quote a fair few back at you but this is the first time I’ve seen a real numerical link between food and exercise. Of course, I’ve always known that exercising is good for you and that if you exercise you can eat more. But I’ve never seen the numbers stacked up next to the food before so that you can see that getting the tube to work instead of walking is the loss of a whole potential gin and tonic (seems to be a gin theme creeping in here!).

I’ve also got a clearer idea of what I might have been doing wrong when I’ve put the weight back on before. When I get to my maintenance weight, I will be allowed between 1650 and 1900 calories (without exercise) since I think I’m somewhere between moderately sedentary and moderately active. Until I saw the number on this site I hadn’t really grasped that short people can’t eat as much as normal height people!

The recipes are great – wish there were more of them actually. I usually look up ideas for Sunday lunch elsewhere, die of shock at the calories and come back to the site to see how to do something just as tasty with just a bit of adaptation.

The Best of Weight Loss Resources

I use the food and exercise diaries every day and the food planner for when I’m trying to be more adventurous with my cooking at weekends.

I didn’t think I would use the Message Boards but I’ve found them to be really great and everyone so supportive. There is a limit to the number of conversations you can have with regular friends and family about the 48 cals in a walnut but it’s great to have a group of people around with similar interests who understand and to share what you are going through with others in the same situation.

I’ve used chat from time to time and it’s fun. But does tend to lead to an outbreak of g&ts in my case!

Rachael's Weight Loss Tips

Write everything down. Even (or especially) on bad/splurge days. It’s only if you write things down that you know what you are doing. I’m not saying don’t have the Peking Duck. I am saying, at least know what having the Peking Duck means.

Try not to obsess too much. I know I do and I’m trying to relax! I can get ridiculously over anxious about not going to the gym or having a chocolate. Life is too short!

Don’t worry about the odd 100 or 200 cals. This whole process is at least in part an art rather than a science and it’s not 100% accurate anyway so it isn’t worth ruining your evening over a Jaffa Cake.

Having lost the weight twice before and put it back on and now getting close to my goal, I’m getting quite anxious about maintenance and putting it back on again. It’s great to know that the site and the people will be here to help with that. I really think I might manage it this time!

Rachael's Vital Statistics

	Before	Now
Weight	12st 8lb	8st 12lb