In 2004, I had my first weight loss surgery, a Lap Band. In 2007, I had that band removed and replaced with a Roux-en-Y gastric bypass.
Today, I am lighter than I have ever been. Even at the age of 13, I weighed more than I do now. My total weight loss is over fifteen stone.
Everybody told me the hard part was over.
They were so wrong.
The first two years were most definitely the honeymoon period. The weight seemed to fall off. My clothes got smaller and smaller, and I was walking on air. I honestly thought I had cracked it.
And then the honeymoon was over.
Just like that.
Life did what life does. Stress. Setbacks. Grief. Curveballs. One by one, they hit me, seemingly out of nowhere.
In what felt like the blink of an eye, my old behaviour patterns came creeping back, and I regained three stone.
But this time, I was alone.
I had no idea where to turn. No matter what I did, shifting that three stone felt impossible.
My clinic's aftercare had stopped. The wonderful friends and family who had supported me, cheered me on and applauded me while the pounds were dropping had gone back to their own lives.
I was left on my own with the hardest part of all.
Keeping it off.
Thankfully, I found the strength and determination to hit back.
There was no way I was going back there.
I spent every waking minute on research. I studied and gained a qualification in health and nutrition. I soaked up everything I could about the body, the gut, the metabolic system and the way I think.
I discovered how it all worked, why I was slipping backwards, and what I needed to do differently if I wanted this to last.
What I discovered changed everything.
The skills that helped me lose weight were not the same skills I needed to keep it off.
So I made it my mission to develop a system that worked in real life.
A system that helped me lose the three stone I had regained, then lose another three stone on top of that, and now, hand on heart, say I have maintained my weight ever since.
I have built a system that is so simple, so practical and so easy to live with, that it is now part of who I am.
I am not special. I am not superwoman. I am an ordinary woman who has to face the same challenges, temptations, emotions, setbacks and everyday pressures as everyone else.
So when I say this is possible, I mean it.
Not because I read it in a book.
Not because it sounds good on a website.
But because I have lived it.
All of my proven strategies became the KIO Method, the foundation for everything I teach and the exact approach I still follow myself, every single day.
How do I know it works?
Because I am living proof.
