How Rosalind Beat Binge Eating & Boosted Confidence at 40 | Slimpod Life-Changing Transformation

Rosalind, it's lovely to have you here. Uh, you're our Podder of the Month, which is quite amazing, uh, and, uh, that's for the month of September. And you have, uh, you've, you've, you've won that accolade, uh, because you, as part of, um, a, uh, a challenge that we were doing in the community, uh, you were brave and, uh, and confident in what you were doing. And, and that especially because that's not always been the case, has it? You, uh, you've had a really, really difficult relationship with food and, and probably yourself, um, for many, many years. And I know that anybody watching this will think that Rosalind's about 18, uh, but actually, actually she really isn't. Uh, she's 40. Uh, and I, I can't believe it. I thought when she was telling me about university, etc., I thought, well, you must be still at university. Um, so, uh, it's, it's just wonderful to have you here, and thank you so much for, uh, for agreeing to come on video with me.

Thank you for having me.

Uh, so, so let's start with, um, with what you said to me, which was that you felt SlimPod is far more than just a tool to lose weight.

Yeah, for me, it sounds a bit cheesy, but honestly has been life-changing, um, in a way that when I signed up, I don't think I could ever imagined the profound effect it would have had on me. Um, and what I find amazing now is, yes, I am still losing weight, I've got a very long journey ahead of me, but it's not actually the weight loss that is the thing that I most enjoy about SlimPod anymore. It's become so much more because I've got so much out of it. And as you say, my confidence— as I've never had very good confidence and my self-esteem was just so low, uh, the way— it's quite horrific when I look back and think about the way I used to talk to myself and the things I would say to myself, um, and the way I treat myself. I just, I just look back and think, why, why was I so cruel to myself? Um, and no wonder I was so happy. Uh, it was— yeah, I, I think what I always found out, like, I was in a battle with my body is the way I describe it. And I just, I just hated looking in the mirror. I hated everything about myself. I felt like I was broken. And now I look in the mirror, and it's still a long process. I'm not saying I always love it, but I look in the mirror and I say to myself, I say, oh, I love my body. I'm proud of my body. Um, my body does incredible things. My body's here for me. Whereas before, I'd look in the mirror and I'd just her abuse of herself. So that change is— and I have to make myself do it. Some days I don't want to tell my body I love it, but I make myself do it because I know that if I keep doing it, then I'm building those neural pathways to make myself feel happier, um, and it will come true. Yeah, I just— my confidence is so much improved. I feel like— I feel content, I think, for the first time ever really in my life. I just feel content with who I am and where I am and what I'm doing, and I feel like I'm making most of opportunities. I'm not hiding away anymore and waiting and feeling like I'm not good enough to do things. And if I don't want to do something, that's okay, I don't have to. But if I want to do something, I feel like I can now, which I just didn't. I felt so trapped before, I think.

And that's why you threw yourself into the challenge, obviously.

Yeah, well, I, I've always seen the dancing videos on the Mondays on I'd never, I'd never would take part. And then I saw this, this September showdown, I was like, right, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it. And then I was visiting, um, family who have a very nice swimming pool, and I just thought, you know what, I'm just going to be a bit silly with this and, um, put my best bikini on and thought— and, you know, I watched the video back and straight away there was a voice saying, oh well, look at the back of your back and look at your arms at that point. I just said no. Not listening to you. Look what I've done. I've done something brave. I've pushed myself out of my comfort zone. I had a laugh while I was doing it. It was silly. It was fun. No one else is going to be looking at those things. You don't need to look at them either. That's okay.

That's fabulous, honestly. And you, I mean, your relationship with food was so, was so complicated and so difficult, and, uh, you used to binge. Uh, where are you with that now?

Honestly, for me, this is the biggest thing that I've found, is the freedom from bingeing. I've tried so many things over the years and I never thought, I never thought I'd be in a place where it just isn't anymore. It's not something I think about. I used to, I'd go to the shop, I'd walk to the shop and I'd walk around the shop buying all sorts of things with the intention of taking them home and eating them, and then I'd be worried it wouldn't be enough, so I'd buy some more. And take that, you know. So I'd just come home with all these things. I'd sit there and stuff my face, knowing as I was doing it how unhappy it was making me, but not able to stop. And I just, even right from the beginning of SlimPod, that was the thing that really changed for me. I remember my very first day, I think it was, listening to the pods, and I sat down with some biscuits, and I was really proud of myself because I did eat the whole pack, but I ate it in 3 different sittings, and that wouldn't Yesterday, the day before, it wouldn't have happened. I'd have shoved it in one. And by the end of a week, I wasn't even eating the biscuits anymore. And now if sometimes I find myself in what I think of as a bit of a binge mood and I'll be moping around the house and wanting to eat something and I'll take a mouthful of something and go, "No, not that." And I'll take— and I know, and then that's where my brain goes, "But you're not hungry, are you? You're in this weird binge mood." That's fine. Just let's walk away and do something else. And that I can recognize that now and not eat. I'll have a bite of something, but before I'd have eaten the whole thing. No, it's not good enough. Let's eat the next thing and just eaten and eaten. And yeah, honestly, it's a bit of a miracle for me because I've lived with this for so long and just not— and just felt very helpless about it. And now I just haven't had a binge since I started SlimPod. Yes, okay, I've had the odd bar of chocolate when I've just been in the mood. I'm not— but it's not the binge I used to have where I'd be out of control and just force-feeding myself. It's honestly, it's amazing. I just, yeah, I can't even express how much that means to me to have made those changes.

Yeah, amazing. And would you say that that is responsible for the weight loss that you've had, or have you also been changing the way you're eating, you know, day by day?

I think actually, I don't think the bingeing has that much effect on my weight looking back. It was more that it was affecting my mental health and the way that I felt about myself and my body. My weight loss is quite slow, but actually, shockingly, that doesn't bother me. I think I've dropped probably about a dress size. I've been just over a year PODDing now. I haven't weighed myself for ages. Last time I think it was about a stone and three quarters-ish, around that. But I've kind of decided I'm not going to weigh again until at least 2026, and then I'll see how I feel because I just don't feel that need to track it that way. And I am quite a slow loser, but I just feel like that's okay because it doesn't— it's not hard work. I'm just— I'm literally just living my life in a way that suits me and eating in a way that suits me. And I still have a very sweet tooth. I still have the— I still have a little odd, what I call sometimes food, to enjoy, and that's okay. I don't beat myself up about it. If I fancy it, I'll have one.

That's great.

Yeah.

You must have noticed that your clothes have been getting looser.

Yeah, definitely. I do, I do like to— I've got a whole— having been lots of different sizes over the years, I've got a whole a wardrobe of clothes in varying sizes from, you know, 8s up to 20s. So I do like to get clothes out and have a little try-on, and I think, oh, I think this is going to be like, I think this will be my next target outfit now. And every month or so I try it on and see how it is. And I definitely, I've noticed the difference 100%. Like, um, I, I feel so, I feel I have lost weight, and I'm really happy with that. I'm really proud. And I just think for me, like, it's getting rid of that impatient feeling. I don't— at first I was very impatient. I was like, it's not going fast enough. And now I'm like, yeah, but it'll go when it goes. Just, just got to keep doing what you're doing every day and look how far you've come in a year. Keep doing this. Next year it's going to— and because I've done that now consistently for the year, I don't feel that panic of it's not quick enough because it's just going. It's going at the rate my body's happy with it going. And next year I'll see even more improvement. And I didn't put all this weight on overnight. It took years to come on, so I'm quite happy with it doing it in the reverse. And I do— I eat way better and my portions are way smaller. Um, I don't really eat breakfast anymore. I do like a cappuccino in the morning, so I don't find I need a breakfast. So I tend to eat, um, lunchtime for my first meal. Um, I don't want sweet things after dinner, which used to be a big downfall Or if I fancy a sweet thing straight after eating, I'll have some water and then within 20 minutes I find I'm not bothered actually, which is great for me as well because it used to always be, had to have something sweet after dinner, whatever it was. So that's a really big change. I was thinking just this week actually, me and my sister sing at a choir and then we go home and watch Bake Off and we're on the way home to watch Bake Off and I thought, gosh, Um, 2 years ago, we'd stop at the supermarket every, every wait time home to get biscuits to watch Bake Off, and now it just wouldn't even occur to us to, to do that because it's just not what we do anymore. We don't need biscuits to watch Bake Off. We're, we're out of that sort of habit. So that was a really nice, like, oh yeah, we don't do that anymore, do we?

Oh, lovely. And so, um, your, your mental health has obviously improved hugely. Um, well, I mean How can you, how can you kind of, uh, talk about, quantify that? What, what has actually happened with, uh, with your mental health? What, what improvements have you seen? They—

I really think that, um, for me, doing the WINS has been such a key part of the program, and I think that's part why it's worked so well for me. I was quite a negative person before this, and I'd had quite a lot of health problems that meant I couldn't do— I've been diagnosed with chronic fatigue in the last couple of years, and that's just really changed things. I just can't do what I used to be able to do, which was quite— it's been quite difficult to adjust to. And I was just really negative, and I always saw the negative, and it was like I didn't want to be positive. It was like I made a choice not to be positive about things, and I would scoff at I'd scoff at things like WINS and meditation and things like that, and I'd be like, oh, it's not for me, it's not for me. And I've been— I've done my WINS every single day since I've started. And if I, if I fall asleep and miss a day, I go back and write them first thing in the morning. And I just— it's just like really shifted my mindset. I, I just find like I'm— I just look for opportunities now where I'd have placed it down straight away before. Even on a really rubbish day when all I've done is work and it was a horrible tiring day, I sit down and I'm like, and my brain goes, well, there's nothing good to write about today. And I say, no, there is something because actually I hung that laundry out and I hate hanging laundry out. Or, you know, I didn't eat a bar of chocolate when I had that wobble about something else earlier. And that's a win. And even on the bad days, I'm like, you can find something good. It can be the simplest, tiniest thing, but you find a good thing. And it's just really changed how I, how I kind of view the, how I view the world. That sounds really cheesy, but it has. I look for opportunity now. I reframe stuff all the time. Sometimes I don't even realize I'm doing it. I've started meditating and I've been doing that since spring, and I do that every day, even if it's just 5 or 10 minutes. Which I never would have done that a year ago. I'd have laughed if someone told me I'd be meditating every day in a year's time. I wouldn't have believed it. And I find also when people are negative with me, it makes me want to say to them, okay, but why don't we try and think of that in a different way? And like to try and— because I'm just, I'm just so pleased that I'm so positive now. I want other people to to be able to adapt to that and to think of things in different ways and not that initial negative reaction, um, and to look at it, yeah, from a different point of view. And yeah, I just like, I'm really content, and I think that I've never felt like this in my life. I've never been satisfied, or, and it's not even about being happy, it's just being like, I'm here now in this moment and it's, and it's a good moment. And Yeah, I've never— I've always felt like I was missing out or things weren't right or grass is greener. And now I just feel like this is for the first time in my life. I feel like this is me and I'm enough and I just, just got to keep doing this every day. And that's, that's all I need to do. Just, just— yeah, it's a nice feeling. Really nice.

Fantastic. Oh my goodness. Honestly, it's just been such a pleasure talking to you and, and really, really lovely. Just it, you know, the transformation really has, uh, it just— yeah, this is why I do what I do.

Thank you. I, I just— yeah, I honestly, I, I just can't believe the, the changes that I've been able to make. And, and it's not been— it's not like it's not hard. It's not like I don't work at it, um, because I do do all— you know, I do the things. I, I read this, come to the Zooms and the lives, and I do my videos and the work and my goal plan. So it's not like I'm just sitting there doing nothing, but it's almost effortless because I just feel like this is my life now. This is what I do every day, so I don't have to think about it because that's just what I do. And there's no internal battle about it. Not always. We all have days where it's a tough one. But yeah, day in, day out, I just feel like this is just my life now and I'll just keep doing this now forever. And that's good. So I'm quite happy to just carry on, which is just really lovely.

Amazing. Amazing. Rosalind, thank you so much. It's just been so wonderful talking to you. And so if there was one thing that you— that one piece of advice that you could give a fellow SlimPodder who either might be just starting out on their journey or struggling a bit because life is never, you know, life is never smooth, there's always ups and downs. Even with weight loss. What one piece of advice would you share?

I think the key for me has been consistency and commitment and carving that time out to, to write your wins. I used to watch my videos on when I was in Gold. I'd just do it all on one day because I didn't have time to do it every day. So I'd carve myself an hour and this was me time and really committing and throwing yourself all in because what have you got to lose? I mean, I said, wait, obviously, but you have nothing to lose. So you're here, you've paid for it, you might as well just give it your all and see where it takes you. And for me, it was very much like after I finished gold, I knew that wasn't the end. It wasn't just 12 weeks for me. I was like, this is carrying on now. I'm here, I'm committing. And that just every day doing that thing, commitment, consistency, Small— I say I have a little affirmation I tell myself every day: small steps every day, tiny teeny steps every day. And when you look back 3 months later, you're like, wow, look at those massive strides I've made by those tiny steps. So that it's just that day in, day out, and let it all add up and let it all build up. But don't give up, don't quit, just keep going, just keep going, keep going, keep going. And sometimes you think nothing's changed. But actually, when you look back, you can see even tiny changes are still changes. And I think when you look back and reflect, you see them and be like, oh, I thought nothing was happening, but actually look at all these things I've done. And if I carry on, what more can— what more will happen? What more will change? Yeah.

Thank you. Just been such a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you for having me.