With three bestsellers in three years and another three books contracted, Australian author Mary-Anne O’Connor felt she’d hit the big time, but unfortunately so had her weight. Then she stumbled across intermittent fasting, or ‘part-time dieting’, and lost 25kg – just in time for her 50th birthday!
‘It was always my life-long dream to be an author and the day I got offered my first book contract I felt incredibly happy and relieved,’ Mary-Anne says. ‘It had taken four years of writing, editing and sending out manuscripts and the moment was one of the sweetest of my life. But then the word ‘publicity’ started getting bandied about by the publisher and I remember thinking ‘oh no, I can’t be in the public eye like this.’ I knew it was time to go on a ‘fear-of-looking-fat-in-the-media-diet.’’
‘It gave me the courage to step on the scales and see how much damage sitting at a desk for four years had actually done and the number staring back at me appeared bigger than my recent good news. ‘There’s something wrong with your scales’ I told the poor lady at the gym. But there wasn’t. It seemed the price of my success was measurable in fat – all 88kg of it.’
‘I knew I had to do something about it before I got up on stage and in front of cameras because I didn’t feel like a success at that size – I felt like a failure. That affected my confidence and potentially my ability to speak publicly and there was no way I was going to let anything sabotage my writing career now. Not after all the blood, sweat and tears (and well, yes, wine and cheese). Not if I could help it, anyway.’
‘But how to help it? All the diets I had done in the past and all the effort at the gym seemed like torture but as a resigned myself to literally get back on the treadmill I met up with my sister who had been doing intermittent fasting. I was surprised by how much weight she had lost on what she called her ‘part-time diet’ – about 20kg at this stage – but I wasn’t convinced I could do it. She was doing the 5:2 version of fasting, a method that means you eat 500 calories two days a week and 2000 the other five. ‘500 calories?’ I squeaked. ‘But where’s the wine and cheese going to fit in?’
‘I chose to sweat it out instead, but my progress was very slow. Then she rang me and told me about another fasting method: 1600 calories a day in an eight-hour window. ‘Sounds do-able,’ I decided. ‘A cheeky red will still fit into that!’ And so I began.’
‘It’s funny how you think you can’t live without breakfast but as it turns out you can. I got used to it the idea pretty quickly and the weight started falling off until I got to my book launch, 15kg lighter. I felt great up on stage and much more comfortable about interviews but then more good news sabotaged me again – two new book contracts! I fell off the fasting wagon as I wrote them and was devastated when I realised I’d regained.’
‘By this time I was six months away from turning fifty and, with another triple book contract and more publicity on my horizon, I decided that this was it, once and for all: I was going to smash this all the way down to my twenty-something weight of 63kg. Yep, 25kg, you are sooo gone.’
‘It was different this time around. I didn’t think of it as being on a fasting diet or off one. I just made it my way of life. A cup of tea for breakfast, healthy eating the rest of the day, and yes, my beloved wine still got a nudge too – along with his dear friend cheese.’
‘It was my fiftieth birthday last weekend and I weighed 63kg. Happy dance? You bet! And I feel confident enough to wear age inappropriate dresses and even donned a bikini in Fiji because, funnily enough, I don’t care as much now what people think. I just feel really happy in my own less-weighed-down skin.’
‘I lost 25kg with online fasting program, SuperFastDiet. Losing this weight has been life-changing, not just because I’m slimmer and healthier, but because I feel ten years younger. And that I can achieve anything now. The new chapter in my own story has just begun.’