‘How I lost 3 stone after refusing to buy bigger trousers’
It was a small thing that made Robert Brown decide to lose weight – he couldn’t do up the button on his jeans. But he knew he had hit a limit. His current size was a 40-inch waist and he absolutely refused to buy size
42 trousers.
“I just decided enough was enough,” said Robert, 56, a health and safety consultant in the construction industry. “I was in my mid 50s and I knew I didn’t want to have to start buying XXL clothes or perhaps face my health getting worse.”
He had seen Slimming World posters around Royston, where he lives, and so plucked up the courage to go along to a meeting with his wife Julie.
“I felt nervous going into the class but my wife came with me because she wanted to lose about a stone. I found it very welcoming. Nobody pre-judges you or anything.
“Carol, the consultant, is brilliant because she has lost a load of weight as well and knows what it’s like to be at the start of the journey. In fact, anybody in the group who is at target weight has been in the same position as you when they first came to Slimming World so they are all very encouraging.”
When Robert first stepped on the scales he was 19st 3lbs but by following the Slimming World Food Optimising programme he quickly started to see results.
“In my second week I lost six pounds, which was amazing! After that I lost one or two pounds a week.”
It took 18 months to reach his target weight but Robert is now 15st 10lb and, at 6ft 4in tall, is happy with his frame. Plus, he now wears 36-inch waist jeans and suit trousers.
He said: “There have been so many benefits to losing weight already. I have quite dodgy knees from playing lots of sport, especially rugby, in my youth and being over 19 stone caused them to hurt a lot. Now I hardly ever get a twinge. I’ve also been able to reduce my blood pressure medication, which my GP was very happy about. And I find simple things like running up and down stairs so much easier now.”
Before he started his slimming programme, Robert was a biscuit fan and he also used lots of butter.
“I ate a lot of food and what I did eat wasn’t very healthy,” he admits.
However, he credits his strong willpower with helping him to stick to the diet, as well as the fact he never went hungry because he could eat as much healthy food as he liked.
“Once I make up my mind I’m doing something, nothing will stop me,” says Robert.
“I’m the type of person that once I say well I’m going to lose weight, then I am going to do it. And I’m just very focused on that. So it wasn’t difficult for me to lose the weight once I changed my mindset.”
Now Robert enjoys a large bowl of fruit for breakfast including berries, mango and melon. For lunch he has soup if he is at home or buys packs of cooked chicken and prawns with salad if he is out. He also fills up on more fruit. In the evenings he cooks a Slimming World recipe, especially his favourite paella dish which, he says, he could “eat every night”.
If he goes out for dinner, Robert orders a steak, but swaps chips for salad and jacket potato – and dooesn’t eat any sauces.
Now he is hoping others will be inspired to make a healthy start to the new year – and he is set on maintaining his weight loss.
He says: “I might have the odd glass of wine now or an occasional biscuit, but I don’t slip back into my old ways.”