About Me

 

My Name is Suzannah Trickett and I had battled personally with my weight since the age of 15. I had tried almost every diet on the planet and all the miracle weight/fat loss pills that I could afford. Yet, at that ripe age of 45, 5ft 5”, a size 22, I was (past tense) a staggering 6 stone (84lbs) overweight.

I was horrified! Things had to change.

When you look at this excess weight in visual terms, in fact, I was carrying 38.10 bags of granulated sugar (1 kilo bags). WOW! Just visualize that for a moment. Picture the bags on a pallet in the supermarket. Imagine trying to pick that up! Not a chance! But yes, I was carrying this weight around with me, daily. My poor heart! What was I doing to myself and my health? As a family, my partner and my three teenage step daughters would sit down to dinner at the table each night. Great opportunities to all keep up together with our relationships, schooling, work and future challenges. We would often talk about food and diets. I would relay what new fad diets I had recently discovered and that was hot on the market at the time and how I was going to undertake many of them. I used to say; “I’m going to start my diet on Monday” and everybody around the dinner table would laugh; eventually it became a long standing running joke for us. Monday came and went, as did many Mondays. It was always a Monday, why? Probably because I was mentally convincing myself that it was the beginning of a new week and a fresh start?

My wakeup call was a trip I took to Bath in Somerset in 2015 (my favourite city in the UK) with my very dear friends. I rarely get the opportunity to go away very often due to time constraints. I was  very excited!! As a women, when you are going somewhere special, you have got to buy something new to wear, well I do anyway. So I went on a shopping spree. I selected a number of potential outfits from the racks and trotted off to the changing rooms to try it all on (of which I seldom do). There is nothing worse than purchasing something for that special occasion, only not having tried it on, why? Was it because you couldn’t be bothered or because you know you, or you think you do? Then when you (often on the actual night) find out it doesn’t fit! Eventually you end up wearing some tired old boring outfit from the dark ages. But oh no, as this trip was special, I thought, best to try the clothes on to save the disappointment later! I hope you can relate, there is nothing worse than finding yourself in some hotel room (or at home for that matter) trying on your new clothes, only to reach that sinking disappointing outcome, Oh bloody hell! IT WONT FIT! It’s too tight! Then to think, that perhaps if I spent those 5 minutes trying this on and being a little more organised/prepared, I wouldn’t be facing dinner in a spanky restaurant only to feel that my circulation around my stomach is being cut off, or better yet, contemplating on wearing my pants alone (as everything I bought wont fit me) to dinner, because at least I would be comfortable.

So there I was, stripping off in the dressing room, bear in mind, that then, I didn’t have any full length mirrors at home (crazy, but true). Once down to my undies (underwear), I turned and looked in the mirror, I was absolutely horrified at what I saw. I could not believe what I looked like and how fat I had become. Immediately I sat down (slumped) on the seat and cried.  What a fat cow! Not only that, I looked at the underwear I was wearing and couldn’t believe, that once the woman, who believed that your underwear was just as important as your outer wear, was wearing mismatched undies, a nude colour bra, with bright pink apple catchers (pants). I immediately took photos of myself on my phone and have kept them to this day as a reminder of what I had become, and never to go back to it!

I started to think about what I had become, how I felt and why I had let this happen. I hated myself, I didn’t feel attractive, and I WAS UGLY! And I was extremely unhappy. I had realised that I had become excessively lazy, couldn’t be bothered with my appearance and wondered how did I get here? I had always been a very happy person in the past. I was funny and excitable, lived and loved life to the full and embraced everything and everyone around me and moreover, I took pride in my appearance. I was the one who made all those poor foods choices and I was the one who created this disgusting being.

“I wanted to know why these diets didn’t work for me?”

I then took action! First of all I had to take FULL responsibility for what I had done to MYSELF. I had decided enough was enough; I wanted to know why these diets didn’t work for me? Why I gained more weight than when I started these regimes? I wanted to know what happens from the moment you put the food in your mouth and what this food does inside your body. I wanted to know which foods were right for me or whether there were some miracle foods out there that I could eat and I would the next day, miraculously be 84lbs lighter (ha ha, joke) clearly a thought process not in the real world!. Seriously though, I thought if I trained myself in nutrition I would learn the tricks and no longer have to subject myself to the media hype. Of course it doesn’t help that I was diagnosed over 10 years ago with Hypothyroidism. For those unfamiliar with this disease, Hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid gland) is the term used to describe a condition in which there is a reduced level of thyroid hormone (thyroxine) in the body. This can cause various symptoms, the most common being: tiredness, weight gain, constipation, aches, dry skin, lifeless hair and feeling cold. Thyroid hormone regulates the way in which the body uses energy – metabolism – and without enough of this hormone many of the body’s functions slow down. Being over 40 and having Hypothyroidism makes losing weight even more challenging.

So in true Suzannah style, meaning, if I needed to know something, I would study for it. Ascertain the knowledge for yourself, I say! After all knowledge is power. I wanted to learn how to get the weight shifted once and for all, and possibly rid myself of Hypothyroidism, as I strongly believe this may be possible through diet management. After all, when I was slimmer, I didn’t have the disease? Many health conditions can be resolved through diet management and I hope my situation may become one of them. My mother in 2015 was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and has managed to control her health problem through proper diet management and regular exercise. I now know through my studies and encompassing that I have seen this first hand, that it is possible to control/resolve some health issues by diet management. I’m not a GP, and once you have been diagnosed with Hypothyroidism I have been told that it is with you for life and is controlled with the correct dosage of medication. This is supposedly meant to stabilise your metabolism and you would return to normal, but I felt far from normal. So, I decided to study nutrition and thus so have gained a number of accreditations in Nutrition, Science, Biology and Physics. Additionally, I am certified as an Advanced Weight Loss Practitioner. I have learned so much from my studies that (and also, so I no longer bore my poor partner to death with my enthusiasm by ramming my new found health consciousness down his throat, poor bugger) I had decided to design this website to pass on my new found knowledge to share with you all and to educate and inspire you to become a success in your health goals as have I. You will be pleased to know, that my medication dosage has dropped dramatically subsequent to embarking on my own Lifestyle Intervention.

So how did I do this?

Previous to my qualifications, diets were a minefield to me! Which one to choose? Which one will work? Should it be low fat, low carb or low sugar? There is such a lot of media hype out there today it becomes very difficult to know which one would be best. The prevailing truth is that it’s neither;

FACT! all diets work; And the truth is! it’s about balance, eating and drinking the right foods and getting regular exercise. I also believe that we are each individual, what will work for one person may not work as well for another and it’s finding what is right for you.

Apart from other contributing factors detailed within this page, how I became a success at my own health and weight loss goals was to look at the topic differently. Initially I downloaded an app called My Fitness Pal (available FREE in the App Store – available for iPhone and Android – Highly recommend, so easy to use) to monitor my eating and drinking. What was incredible was the total amount of calories I was consuming! I always felt that I ate very well, and by well, I thought that I ate very healthily. I wasn’t shovelling a massive amount of takeaways and such like foods down my neck. But I was overeating; my portion sizes were out of control. I was alarmed at the total amounts of fat, sugar and carbohydrates I was consuming daily. This highlighted the problem for me, I knew where I was going wrong and that something had to change. After calculating my BMI clinically I was obese! Wow obese, shock horror! I never thought I would be classed as that! Apart from the foods and portion sizes, my alcohol consumption accredited massively to my weight gain. In fact, I know it was the main contributor.  Now don’t get me wrong I’m not an alcoholic, but you don’t really realise how many calories you consume when you drink alcohol.  I mean some days I would consume 700-1000 calories just in alcohol! Wowsers! But not only that, the damage alcohol does to the body is outrageous.  You really must read my article on Alcohol here; it will certainly make you think a little more when you consume alcohol.  But hey, don’t get me wrong I like a drink too, but when you are trying to get healthy and lose weight, sadly it’s a big no, no.  Some say “its ok in moderation” but you may change your mind once you have read the article.

So, I decided to shift my way of thinking and instead of thinking about dieting, I changed my thought process, to, changing my lifestyle, to become more healthy and fit. I wasn’t on a diet; I was on a Lifestyle Intervention! With my new found knowledge I have changed the way in which I eat. The sayings are true, “only fat people skip breakfast” or “you are what you eat”. Three quarters of successful dieters have one thing in common, and that is, they all eat breakfast! The knowledge, that nutrition, meaning, what we choose to eat and drink, influences our health and wellbeing and quality of life. I look at exercise differently too, I have chosen to look at exercise as a way to take a break, sounds strange possibly to some, but I work from home, I am there all the time and very seldom go out, so for me, exercise was like a night out, which is how I saw it nonetheless. It was my nights off from the chores, children, dogs, it was my time for me, my time to gather my thoughts and think about me for a change. It is wonderful time spent, but the key, I feel, was to pick an exercise that you would enjoy; I love swimming, so for me initially it was water jogging, because the heavier you are, the more weight you will lose and what’s more, it’s kinder to your joints. In addition, for variety, I also chose rebounding. Initially I bought a second hand rebounder off eBay for a fiver (£5) and a rebounding DVD for a tenner (£10) and life’s grand! Nowadays though I have upgraded myself to the king of all rebounders and purchased the wonderful Bellicon.

This is mine.

For more on the Bellicon, please see my Product Review page.

I bop away on my rebounder, listening and singing (well, trying to, out of breath most of the time) to my favourite songs and have a whale of a time. I feel, among other feelings, mentally refreshed and energised. Furthermore research shows that for an average 140lb woman, will burn approximately 405 calories in 40 minutes of rebounding and what’s more, you keep on burning calories once you’ve completed your workout, for up to 8 hours after! That’s encouragement if not anything.  The heavier you are, the more you will burn. I do this twice a day, it really works for me. I also attended evening classes for urban rebounding (this is an aerobics workout but on large trampolines on the walls and floor, and boy you really feel it the next day) and Aqua Fit (water aerobics). These exercises worked for me, so you need to find something that works for you. Being active is one key to good health; you will feel great on the inside and out. Forcing yourself to go to the gym and pound away on a treadmill and hating every minute of it, means you will find excuses on why not to go. However, if you find something that you love, it becomes less of a chore and more about relaxing your mind, giving you motivation to include these new regimes in your day-to-day lifestyle.

You are in charge of you! If you buy a lottery ticket and you don’t win, you buy it again and see if you win a second time and so on. That’s the same with dieting, if one diet doesn’t work, you’ll try another and the cycle carries on. First, try to concentrate on becoming healthier and not focussing on losing weight so much. I know that’s hard to digest, if you were anything like me at the outset, you just want a quick fix, but please, please trust and believe me that your cycle will continue unless YOU break it. Yes you will lose weight following my guidance, but that should not be at the forefront of your mind. It should be a side effect and a phenomenal reward for you. Remember this is a Lifestyle Intervention and a change for YOUR foreseeable future.

I am here if you need any help or advice. Please use the Contact Us option.

In the meantime, I wish you the very best on becoming a new YOU!

Best regards Suzannah Xx Back to top