Weight loss can be achieved through a calorie deficit diet as well as exercising more. However results can take a long time to see which is why so many people turn back to their old habits. Kerri Ward, 29, lost three dress sizes in just six months to be able to feel more confident at her wedding.
On her weight loss, Kerri said: “I’ve always struggled with health issues since I was a child. Not only have I been overweight since a young age, but growing up I also suffered from severe asthma, which affected my ability to exercise.
“I was bullied and teased about my weight, which affected my own perception of myself, leading to poor self-image, lack of confidence and an unhealthy relationship with food. By the time I was in my teens I was trapped in an unhealthy cycle of binging and starving myself as the number on the scales continued to climb.
“I eventually went to therapy for this, which helped me to overcome it, though my relationship with food was still far from healthy and I continued to struggle with my weight.”
Kerri explained how she attempted to lose weight by embarking on various diets over the years like juice detoxes, and extreme diets where you could only eat fruits and vegetables.
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However the 29-year-old said that she struggled to keep the weight off.
Kerri added: “Eventually I realised that a diet just wasn’t going to work. All of these approaches made me feel bad about myself and some of them triggered the disordered eating habits from my teenage years.
“I hated cutting out foods and food groups because I love cooking, and I didn’t want to eat super-processed foods such as meal replacements that were low in calories but ultimately harmful to my heath. Though I never hated my body, and through therapy and self-care had learned to love and accept myself the way I was, I still worried constantly about the possible health issues being overweight might lead to in the future.
“I knew my lifetime of bad habits and my unhealthy relationship with food were holding me back, but I felt too paralysed by fear and self-doubt to do anything about it.”
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Turning to the Noom programme, the weight loss programme helped Kerri lose a whopping 16kg.
She said: “I had seen the Noom ad on social media million times, and the programme’s focus on lifelong healthy habits and behaviour change through psychological techniques intrigued me. When I came across it again in April 2019, I thought to myself, well, why not give it a try?
“When you start the Noom programme, you set a goal for yourself. My goal was to be the healthiest and happiest version of myself so I could enjoy an active life with my soon-to-be husband and be fit enough to take part in all the activities he enjoyed, such as hiking and running. I had been with my husband for 12 years at the time – we were school sweethearts – so I didn’t feel like I needed to change my appearance for him.
“He loved and accepted me just the way I was. He even told me, ‘It doesn’t matter what size you are, I’m going to think you’re the most beautiful woman in the world on our wedding day’. However, our wedding day was booked for October 2019 and I had bought my wedding dress in a size 14 in February. By April, when I joined Noom, I was a size 16, so I knew I had to lose some weight in order to fit into my dress.”
By following the weight loss programme, Kerri managed to surpass her goal of fitting in her size 14 dress and had to alter it to a size 10 to fit her new body.
She said: “But beyond the benefits of feeling confident and comfortable on my wedding day, the most revolutionary transformation with the Noom programme has been the effect of the weight loss on my mental and physical health. Noom helped me to completely rebalance my relationship with food. I allow myself to eat all foods in moderation, have a varied diet, don’t have any ‘banned foods’ and don’t struggle with the urge to binge or overeat.
“I used to see food as something that controlled me – now food is something that fuels my body and brings me pleasure. Though I am still on an asthma management programme, losing weight helped to ease my asthmatic symptoms to the point that I could go to the gym and go for runs, which has hugely improved my cardio fitness and strengthened my lungs.
“My progress with my fitness has been so great that it’s become a big part of my personality and at the beginning of this year I was training for a triathlon and planning to hike the Himalayas in May – this would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago!”
Unfortunately Kerri and her husband caught coronavirus in March which meant that her plans for their hike and triathlon were put on hold.
However Kerri explained how her weight loss through Noom improved her fitness, meaning she was able to recover better. She also shares how the weight loss programme is the only one she’s ever tried that doesn’t make her feel guilty or ashamed of her body.
She said: “The articles are informative and encouraging and always give me a feeling of ‘yes, I’ve got this!’ The community of my in-app support group is like having a team of cheerleaders rooting for me, and my goal specialist Samantha is amazing – she understood me right away and I have her to thank for a lot of my success. The tracking and logging gives me real data I can work with that helped me understand how and why I was losing – or not losing – weight.
“I can see clear changes in my habits and routines from before using the programme to now. Whereas previously I used to eat out a lot for lunch, Noom’s approach helped me to get into the habit of preparing meals and snacks in advance to take to the office.
“As Noom places an emphasis on fitting movement and activity into my day, I now take a walk at lunchtime every day and have regular movement breaks to get away from my desk. These habits haven’t just helped me to lose weight, they’ve reduced my stress levels and even saved me some money!
“Noom puts a big emphasis on self-care, which is something I was terrible at before as I rarely gave myself time to relax and always put other people first.
“I really worked on this with the programme and it’s made such a difference.
“By giving me prompts such as ‘reward yourself’ and lessons such as ‘the moments that you look after yourself are as important as the moments where you push yourself’, I learned to take time out to treat myself, and always felt amazing afterwards!”