Jessica’s Weight Loss story

This isn’t only a story about weight loss. Excess weight is often only a symptom of how we feel inside, and it is a testimony to how much better Jess feels about herself, now that she has been motivated to care for her body as well as she has.

In the course of our work together, I did use a few hypnotherapy techniques, NLP techniques and quite a bit of EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, or ‘tapping’), along with guidance and teaching, I feel that most of the credit has to go to Jessica herself. She was, and is, an inspiration to me in her willingness to make the changes to her thinking and lifestyle to bring out the best in herself. I take credit only for believing in her.

I am going to let Jessica speak for herself, so have asked her to write her story, and here it is!

Jessica says:

As you can see from the pictures I was big and I mean BIG, I might have been smiling in those “before” pictures but it hid a lot of unhappiness that I had at the time. I had low self-esteem, confidence and self-belief.

 

I also tried several ways to lose weight and had not succeeded as much as I would have liked. I didn’t know what else to do to lose weight.

 

I had reached a point where I needed to do something about it, and I found Gayle just at the right moment! When I came to Gayle, I was very much a couch potato, did very little exercise and procrastinated a lot! So, Gayle did some work with me to improve my self-belief and general attitude and to get me to have a mind-set into losing weight and to exercise. She guided me in the right direction, giving me nutritional advice, and gave suggestions for healthy eating, which I followed. I found it hard to start with having been used to eating the wrong food, I did fall off a few times, but I managed to get back into healthy eating again. Earlier this year, I followed a detox plan to see if I had any food intolerance. I found I had some and since then I have changed my diet. Over time, I have lost much more weight.

 

I took up a variety of exercise classes and did a few sessions a week as well as using the gym. I love my exercise classes and I have really benefitted from them. Over a period of time, I started to notice that I was losing weight, a few pounds here and there and eventually I lost a stone, which was so exciting for me as I could see the effort I had put into exercising and eating healthily were paying off. Each time I lost weight, I smiled more and slowly but surely, became a lighter Jessica!

 

The photos of me with the cartons and bottles of water was Gayle’s idea. She suggested I fill up some cartons and bottles with water, equivalent to the total amount of weight I needed to lose, to keep me motivated. I didn’t have the heart to throw away the water when I started to lose a few pounds each week, as I wanted to do that at the very end so that I could feel the satisfaction of throwing ALL the water out, knowing that I had achieved what I wanted to do.

 

After the photograph was taken, I tried to lift about 14kg (2 stone) worth of cartons/bottles. It was so heavy that I had quite a job to hold on to them! This was a big shock for me, as it made me really see how much weight I was carrying in me, and why I struggled so much with the excess weight.

 

The photos at the bottom of the post, shows the difference in my weight from my heaviest to how I am now. The jacket and trousers I am wearing in the photo, were size 22 and I am now size 14/16. This has made me realise how far I have come! When I was at my heaviest size (22) I struggled a lot with exercising and walking.

 

I felt as if I was the same as an old person and not being the young me that I should have been. Now that I have become slimmer, being big is a distant memory for me!

 

Over a period of about ten months, I have lost six stone, through healthy eating and exercise. My confidence, self-esteem and self-belief have improved so much, from unhappy Jessica to happy Jess! I no longer feel “invisible” or hide behind my weight. I love being able to dress using normal size clothes, not reaching out for the “plus” size clothes.

 

Although I have to say it is expensive buying new clothes, but, oh, it is so much fun! I love taking pride in my appearance with clothes and make up. I love seeing the reactions of surprise on peoples’ faces when they see how good I look. I also love the compliments people have given me. Most of all, I am so happy with the new me.

 

I have not finished yet, as I want to lose one more stone, then I will reach my goal weight. I am so much more motivated now to be able to lose the last stone, as I have managed this far with the six stone weight loss. Having Gayle’s support has been such an encouragement for me in having the willpower and motivation to change my life with food and exercise.

 

Thank you so much Gayle!

Before pics:

Jess posing with bottles of water after losing over five stone – the bottles of water weighs the exact amount of weight she had lost up to this point.

More of Jess now, looking amazing!

Watch this space for more!