Page 20 - Healthy food

Weight-loss star

At almost 18 stone and with her 50th birthday looming, Lisa Parke knew she had to tackle her diet
demons. After 30 years of fad diets, she’s made peace with food and lost almost half her body weight

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LISA PARKE, 51

HEIGHT 5ft 7in
WEIGHT WEIGHT
BEFORE NOW
_
18st 10st 3lb
(114kg) (64.9kg)
Lisa, now 51, a classroom teaching assistant
in a primary school, lives in Beckenham,
BMI BEFORE BMI NOW
39.4 22.3
Kent, with her husband Phil, 53, a retired
fire fighter, and their two children Sam,
DRESS SIZE DRESS SIZE
BEFORE NOW
19, and Millie, 17.
24 10
’ve battled with my weight since
WAIST BEFORE WAIST NOW
49in (124cm) 26.5in (67cm)
childhood. I can remember being 9st at
age nine and dreading my birthday
Ibecause I thought people wouldn’t be
able to lift me to give me the bumps.
Like a lot of teenage girls, I gave up sport
in my teens. I’ve always been good at losing
weight, though, sometimes shedding several
stone, but I always regained the weight quite
quickly. When I think back to various life
events I always remember how much
I weighed at the time.
I tried every fad diet – Atkins, the Air
Hostess Diet, the Cambridge Diet, cabbage
soup, The Beverly Hills Diet, the egg and
grapefruit diet, The F Plan… You name it.
I just never had a healthy relationship with
food. I was the original comfort eater and I’d
always rather eat less than exercise more to
burn it off. I’d try to restrict my calories but
then every so often would binge eat. At one
stage I even tried diet pills (amphetamines),
but they were obviously not a good idea. It
was a vicious circle I couldn’t seem to escape.

No diet worked for long
I tried every approach to dieting, too –
joining Rosemary Conley’s diet and exercise
club, Slimming World, Weight Watchers
and SureSlim. I tried any type of group
support diet club around and even became a
group leader for one company – but nothing
worked long term. Looking back, I can see
quite clearly now it was because every single
one of those diets involved either cutting out
food groups or drastic meal replacements
that didn’t teach me to eat a healthy
balanced diet. I was always ‘on a diet’, but it

20 HEALTHY FOOD GUIDE FEBRUARY 2018