She Lost 53lbs & 37 Inches by Retraining Her Brain — NOT Dieting! Slimpod Transformation

Thank you, Irene. Just, um, you've been part of our community in SlimPod, uh, for 6, 7 months now, and the difference in you has just been quite phenomenal. But it's unexpected differences, obviously, for you, uh, and so I just, uh, just thought, can you just give people a little bit about your background first before— even from— because you were You felt fat, you say that you felt fat in childhood and just, yeah, how that's kind of happened, you know, with your head.

Not fat exactly, but bigger.

Bigger, yeah.

How would you put it? Bigger than other children. Yeah. You know, I kind of felt chonky, I guess.

Right, yeah.

You know, other children were small and slight and I always felt kind kind of big and chunky.

Bigger, yeah.

Didn't really think of myself as being fat. And went into my teens as quite a tiny waist and, you know, reason, you know, sort of size, I don't think I got bigger than a size 10 until after I got married. And then it's sort of, that's really kind of when it all changed a little bit, really. That's terrible, isn't it? But—

No, it is, it's what happens with so many people.

And then, and I think, you know, yeah, yeah, children and having children a lot of the time.

Yeah. Um, and then a kind of a little cycle emerged, didn't it, where you were kind of losing the same amount of weight or similar amount of weight?

Yeah, I think the first time I kind of managed to gather about 3 stone extra. I think it was late, mid to late 20s, after I'd had my second child, so it must have been late 20s. I'd managed to gather about an extra 3 stone and I just did that, got rid of that by myself. Not quite the 3 stone, it was never, I was never able to get quite back to how I was before. But, and then after that, it was, yeah, kind of 4 stone was the figure. I think 3 additional times I gained and lost 4 stone or thereabouts. Yeah.

And your body was suffering a bit. Yeah.

So the last time I did it was with Weight Watchers. And really, I lost 4 stone and it took me about a year to lose that. And that was about the time, really, that I started to have the bone and joint issues. So when I'd lost it, it was helpful. But then when it started to come back on after a month, what happened was my mum died.

Right.

And that really, really sort of affected me quite badly, threw me off kilter completely. And I kind adopted this attitude of, well, what's the point? What's the point in not having that piece of cake? What's the point in not having that glass of wine? I could be dead tomorrow, so I might as well have it. And, and of course, I just carried on in that way until suddenly it was all back on. And, um, and then lockdown happened, and, um, a little bit more went on as well.

So yeah, but you were really suffering from osteoarthritis, weren't you, at the start of— well, all of last year?

Yeah, and yeah, I mean, really badly. Even before lockdown, I'd been to see specialists. I'd seen a surgeon about having an operation on my back. And I didn't want to go down that route if I could help it. So I avoided the surgery. But it was really, yeah, it was really debilitating. I wasn't able to do the things that I wanted to do. I mean, we love to travel and, you know, holidays abroad and all the sightseeing. It was really taking its toll. You know, I just couldn't do it. And one, I think the November before the first lockdown, we go to the classical spectaculars at the Royal Albert Hall twice a year. We've been doing it for years. And in November, we went with friends and we stayed over. And the following day, we were going to go to Winter Wonderland. And I was in such a bad way that I couldn't, I just couldn't walk. It was pretty chronic. And in the end, I just said, please go ahead without me. Because I'm just stopping you from having fun and it makes me feel bad. And my husband actually said to me, that was the first time he'd said it, but he said it a few times since then as well, I think maybe at some point we might have to look at getting you some sort of mobility scooter type thing, you know. And I thought, I'm not having that, I'm not. You know, I couldn't stand the thought of being in that kind of state. But yeah, so goodness. And I didn't feel it as badly during lockdown because we weren't able to do anything. No. When we were allowed to go out for walks, I would— we would go to somewhere like Thornton Reservoir and have a walk round, which is probably about a 5-mile walk. And I would have to keep stopping at every bench, practically. I would have to stop and have a rest because my back and my hips and everything else was just hurting so badly.

And it was having a real impact on your quality of life, wasn't it?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. So we're talking mid-July, right now in 2021, and in But wind back 6 months ago to January 2021. You came across SlimPod.

I did, yeah.

And I think it's, it is, it for me, it's really hard to believe what's happened in that amount of time. Uh, you know, I've just seen it all unravel on in our private group, but, uh, honestly, I, I'm just, uh, yeah, I, I, that's why I needed you to come and talk, talk and, and inspire everybody with your story. Um, So how long did it take to notice a difference?

Maybe a day. Well, not notice a difference in how my body was feeling, but notice the difference in me and what I was doing. I literally listened to— I take it back. You know, the lockdown occurred in January of this year, and I kind of thought to myself, oh my God, I've already put extra weight on last year through the lockdowns, and I can't— I'm just going to be even worse if I put more weight on. So I've got to tackle this now. And that's when I saw the advert for SlimPod and thought, well, I don't really want to go back to any of the other, uh, programs. And I, I've always sort of known that it's really in the mind, so much of this. I've given up smoking years ago, and that was very much a, you've got to get yourself in the right mindset. So I knew that it had everything to do with the mind, and this seemed to be telling me that that's what it was going to focus on. So I thought, well, What have I got to lose? I, you know, nothing. So, you know, it was a free trial. Why not give it a go? And literally I listened to the first, the pod the first night, and the next day I got up and went for a walk. It just, I was compelled to do that. And then the following day I did the same. And within, I mean, for the first 3 weeks, I didn't touch a packet of crisps. I didn't touch chocolate. Charlotte Roycroft-Davis. And it wasn't because I consciously thought I'm not gonna eat those things. It was just, I, I didn't even think about them. It just didn't enter my head. Um, so I stopped snacking, which was what I was doing a lot of. And even my wine consumption was just radically reduced cuz I working from home as well. I was tending to open a bottle in the evenings in the week, where I'd always sort of kept it to weekends, really. So that just— I just noticed straight away that I wasn't snacking, I wasn't drinking as much wine, and I didn't have to make an effort to do that. It just came naturally. But the walking is the biggie for me because I was in as much pain when I started walking every day as all the other times that I'd started walking. But suddenly my mind was telling me, ignore that, just carry on. And so I did. And that's what's surprised me more than anything is that when I did carry on, I seemed to break through that pain barrier. And I was able to walk a bit longer. I'm not saying it didn't hurt because sometimes I felt I was doing an endurance test. But yeah, it just, it built up and built up. I started out walking, only being able to walk about 20 minutes, and I built it up to 30 minutes and then 40 minutes and then 50 50, and then an hour. And then my husband went back to work, and I started doing the walking on my own. And I felt like actually, when I was walking on my own, it made me even more capable because I kind of set my own pace then, and I didn't have anybody to rely on, you know. And I think I made even greater improvements when I was walking on my own. So now I can actually walk for approximately 2 hours before I get the really excruciating pain. And I mean, that's pretty phenomenal.

It is pretty phenomenal. My gosh, it really is. That is fantastic. And, you know, you saying that the walking was taking center stage, obviously, but how has it helped your food decisions as well? Tell me a bit about that.

Well, it's made me more conscious about, I suppose, the types of food that I was looking at eating. But it was just a very natural progression. I don't think I actually thought, right, I'm going to not eat cake anymore, not eat chocolate. You know, it just seemed very natural. And the other thing that I suppose the, the other quite big thing that happened was I stopped eating breakfast. And that I've found out since is called intermittent fasting.

I am—

well, I didn't actually know that that was really a thing.

No, I know exactly. It is. I've been doing that for years just naturally because I don't actually need breakfast. I don't want it. But Now it's called something, it's called like the 5:2 or the 18:12 or 16:12. Yeah, I don't know, 16:8 I think. But yeah, totally.

I never thought that I could want to go without breakfast because it just seemed natural to wake up in the morning and have breakfast. Well, I mean, it was only really ever cereals or something like that unless we were away staying in a hotel and having a a cooked English breakfast, but, you know, mostly it was just cereal. But I just, I just didn't really want it. So I stopped having it. And I was amazed, really, when I thought about it, that I didn't feel hunger pains by lunchtime. You know, it just didn't really happen. Yeah.

So, and you're trusting yourself more around food, aren't you?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm not saying that I don't eat. I do eat things now. I remember the very first time after about 3 weeks, I had a packet of crisps. I think I even posted it on the group that I'd had a packet of crisps and I felt like the world had come crashing down because I'd let myself down. But when I thought about it rationally, of course, I thought, well, that's one packet of crisps. You know, I'd normally have eaten a couple of multi bags in that time, you know. So I do still have the odd packet of crisps and the odd cake, but nowhere near, nowhere near as much as before. The snacking really has completely stopped. I don't feel the need to do that. So the only time I really feel like I'm overindulging is if we go away or we're doing something in particular, something a bit more special, out of the ordinary. And then I just think to myself, I'm not even going to think, I just go along with the flow, and if I fancy it, I'll have it, and if I don't, I won't.

Fantastic. It's just brilliant. And you, you mentioned that it's just eliminated the misery of, you know, of the whole dieting scenario, or that you didn't even— you didn't actually mention dieting. It was the weight— the misery surrounded by weight loss, you know, with the weight loss.

Yeah, because I mean, you're really— I mean, really, at the end of the day, in order to lose weight, there's got to be some form of restriction on your intake of food and drink, you know. So you know that. And if you go to any other diet program, you usually have to count points or, um, Syns or whatever they are, or count calories. Um, and, and that brings misery because you feel always as though you're deprived. And with SlimPod, there was none of that. There was no, uh, we're telling you you can't have this and you can't have that. There was none of that. You could eat whatever you wanted to eat. And the thing is, you just didn't want to.

So you—

that's where trusting yourself comes into it. You, you really begin to trust yourself to make the right decisions for yourself. You, whatever it is you need to do. For me, I knew that I needed to get some weight off to make— reduce my pain, to make my joints and my bones feel a bit better. And so that's what my focus was, and I knew that I had to do what I had to do to do that. And it just takes away the misery of doing it. It just doesn't feel as though you're depriving yourself at all.

Fantastic. And you've actually lost a little bit of weight as well, haven't you?

I have. Actually, I weighed myself this morning. I've lost a little bit more, not quite what I wanted to be at this point in time, but I'm 1 pound off 3 stone. I've lost 2 stone, 13 pounds so far.

That is only in 6 months, which is quite extraordinary.

Yes, because when you think, when I went to Weight Watchers, it was 4 stone in a year. I lost that in a year, so this is good going. But it feels, I mean, I guess it works out to be around about 1.5 pounds a week, so it kind of feels quite consistent. I've not done any sort of big— I've not lost sort of 5 pounds one week and nothing. It's not been up and down. It's been quite a steady regular loss. And my clothes are feeling so— oh, I mean, that, that is another thing. I'm actually getting clothes out of my wardrobe that I'd packed away from, from last time I was thinner. Really nice clothes that I didn't want to, I didn't want to throw away or give away. And they're fitting me. In fact, some of them are feeling too big. They're actually too big. So I think I've lost in different places, definitely at the top, tops of my legs. I mean, I've lost 5 inches from around the top of one of my thighs, you know. So I think I've lost around about 37 inches from all over my body.

Wow, that's incredible. Incredible. And so really the difference between— well, the difference in 6 months is quite extraordinary. I started this by saying that, and now, you know, just unbelievable. It really is. And do you think that it is the weight loss that has helped the whole pain thing, or is it the walking? What is it? Because you started walking almost instantly. You didn't have to lose the weight to, you know, that's what we most people think that they have to lose the weight to be out of pain, but that hasn't happened with you.

No, no. I think the walking has empowered me, really. That's one of the things that I've said. I feel like I've got the power to do, to make the changes. It's in me. And that has shown me that if It is a case of mind over matter. And it is possible. It's actually possible to ignore the pain and push on through it, which makes you more capable. You know, I mean, I've become stronger because of that. But the weight loss has come along with it because it's helped. I haven't had to reduce as much what I'm eating as I would have done if I hadn't been doing the walking, I think. So the weight loss has come along with it. And I think the two things combined is what sort of got me to where I am. But I think the walking is definitely the thing that's empowered me and made me feel stronger with my ailments. Then it's just surprised me the way it's happened, really, because I wasn't expecting that. I was just thinking that I was going to be doing something that would help me lose weight, that would then have a knock-on effect on how I felt in my body. So that, all that has been a complete surprise to me, really.

Yeah. Amazing. So if you had a message to anybody watching this, maybe your fellow Slimpodders or, you know, anybody else, would there be, would there be one kind of message that you would that you would give out?

It's really difficult to say because if somebody would have said to me 12, 18 months ago, just ignore the pain, just ignore the pain and carry on, I'd have thought they was mad. You know, I just thought, I actually thought that I wasn't was totally not capable of doing that. I wasn't capable, and I'd probably do myself more damage. I really did. So it's— I think it's difficult to tell people, yeah, ignore that pain. But I kind of want to. I want to say to people, really try, really try to ignore it and carry on. Um, and you'll be surprised. You might actually be surprised at what you can do if you do that.

Yeah, absolutely. And you were very skeptical when you started this, didn't you? Weren't you? You were very skeptical. Well, like, like 99% of people are. And how did that come round?

Kind of a bit hard to believe that just listening to one little 9-minute-something pod is going to suddenly affect you in a way like it has me, you know, got me walking on a daily basis. And I mean, to the point where if I don't get out there, I feel deprived. It's a— yeah, so I couldn't quite get my head around how this— how was this thing ever going to be able to really help me? And then, you know, there are some maybe little inconsistencies that are hard to add up in your brain. But I think the thing is to just go with the flow. Just listen. I mean, literally all we're asked to do, isn't it, is write 3 wins every day, watch your videos, and listen to that pod. It's not a big deal. So I, I, I had a word with myself really and sort of said, you know, it doesn't really matter how you think. Actually, my husband said, oh, you're being brainwashed with that. And I said, well, you know what, if it's working, I really don't care because it's doing me good. So carry on. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Charlotte Roycroft-Davis. It's just been really— I love, I love these chats because they're just so inspiring. And, and yeah, thank you. You'll inspire so many people who are watching this.

I hope, I hope so. I hope it does encourage other people to do it, especially if they're in a similar position to me. Yeah, to try and do it.

Yeah, and, and I suppose believe you can, believe really that it's possible.

Believe in yourself as well and trust yourself. Yeah.