No one knows this better than Super Staffer Mary-Anne O’Connor and she shares her story today, including how she pressed re-start and succeeded at last – the second time around.
“The first time I did SuperFastDiet was when I had my first novel being published and I remember calling it at the time my ‘fear of media’ diet,” Mary-Anne told us. “Having gained 25kg since getting married and having kids I attributed most of the weight gain to sitting down at the computer all day and endless hours of editing. It also didn’t help that the kitchen was packed full of kids’ food and it was hard to resist that when you were at home all day. My sister Gen was losing weight easily and, together with her business partner Vicki, they had begun designing SuperFastDiet. I was one of their first guinea pigs.
“Having struggled with weight before, I took a lot of persuading to try something new. I was pretty determined to do it the old, hard way, i.e. eating a boring, prescriptive menu each day and killing myself at the gym, but I became convinced when I saw the results they were getting. The weight came off really quickly. In fact, I lost 18kg fast and wore my goal dress to the book launch. Hooray! Unfortunately I got complacent after that and, very foolishly, went to weighing myself on my very old scales, so old in fact they were covered in beige eighties carpet. I kid you not. They were very inaccurate and I didn’t realise that I had regained quite a lot of my original weight.”
“The day of reckoning came when I stepped onto real scales at the hospital and stared in shock at the number on the screen. ‘Excuse me nurse, your scales seem to be broken,’ I said, with a slightly manic tone to my voice. ‘No, they’re not. We have them calibrated weekly,’ came the brisk reply. I half expected her to add ‘fatty!’ as I looked at my weight once more. 81 kilograms. I thought I was 68! I rushed to the bathroom and cried, a very pathetic thing to do when in a casualty ward and the only thing wrong with you is weight gain, but it was a painful, dark moment just the same. I’d thought I’d done so well!”
“That was the moment I nearly gave up. ‘What’s the point?’ I berated myself dismally. ‘I’ll just end up failing again. I’m weak…destined to be fat…can’t do it. Sigh/wail/sob.’ But then I listened to that other, more reasonable voice that often comes through after the initial angst of such moments. ‘You did it before. It was the easiest weight loss you’d ever achieved! Of course you can do it again…you’d be mad not to.’”
“That day, on the way home from hospital, I went to the shops and bought a new set of scales, my determination stronger than my disappointment now. I started again on SuperFastDiet the very next day and stuck to it firmly, weighing myself regularly until finally the number ticked down to a real 68kg. I was so encouraged I lost another four kilos! So here I am, 64kg for real and ready to tell anyone – don’t give up! There is no shame in starting again, in fact you’ll end up making yourself feel very, very glad you did because once you crack this way of life, I’m telling you, it’s super easy to maintain.”
So, press that re-start button Super Fasters, if that’s what you need to do. This is a lifestyle, remember, one that you are adopting as a long-term, forever solution, and if at first you don’t succeed, have another go. Because, like Mary-Anne says, once you ‘crack’ it, you’ve got this. For good.