Lorraine Harney began losing weight in preparation for her wedding, but she quickly realised that it transformed her health and her life.
The Kerry native had been gradually gaining weight over a number of years, but when she became engaged she wanted to look her best for her big day.
Now over five stone down, she realises how limited her life was before and how weight loss isn’t just about looking better, but about feeling better too.
Read more:Westmeath woman Sharleen McCaffrey-Doyle lost a stone and a half while eating the food she loves
“I got engaged in 2019,” Lorraine told RSVP Magazine. “We had our engagement party and celebrations, and when I was looking at photos afterwards I really wasn’t happy with my appearance.
“I had gained a bit of weight during my relationship - relationship weight as they call it, from going out together and eating out and dates and that sort of thing.
“At the start of 2020 I decided to make a change.”
After hearing from friends and family who had success on the Slimming World plan, Lorraine decided to give it a go - but disaster struck when the world shut down thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic just as she was joining a group.
“We moved house in February, and I had decided I would join Slimming World in March,” said Lorraine. “Of course, then lockdown came so I didn’t join anything and I actually gained another stone.”
However, she decided not to let the lockdown get in her way and joined an online group in May.
“I told myself that while we were in lockdown, I would have loads of time for cooking so it would be a good start,” she said. “We had the wedding booked by then so that was my main motivator at the time.
“But after losing my first stone, I just started feeling so good. I was able to walk more without being out of breath, I was sleeping better and really feeling all those health benefits that come with weight loss. I had initially wanted to lose weight for the wedding but this really pushed me to continue because it made me feel great inside as well as out.”
The couple had to move their original wedding date due to Covid-19, tying the knot in November 2022. After losing around five and half stone for the big day, Lorraine managed to maintain her weight for the rescheduled wedding and felt beautiful on her day. She gained some weight after the wedding and on the honeymoon but she is now getting back into her routine to be as healthy as she can.
“It’s more for health conscious reasons,” Lorraine said. “We’re hoping to start a family. I feel good when I’m on track and eating healthy.”
The couple travelled to New York on their honeymoon, and Lorraine says the trip was like night and day compared to the trip that they had taken there in 2019.
“The first trip, I would have been so tired from any bit of walking,” she said. “I was constantly like, can we sit down, can we take a break, can we wait?
“This time when we went I was five and a half stone down and it was all walking everywhere; we were getting around 30 thousand steps a day and I was able to do it all.”
Lorraine doesn’t strictly stick to the Slimming World plan anymore and calorie counts most of her meals, but she says she owes it to Slimming World for getting her into more structured eating habits and the confidence to cook her own meals.
“I’m just calorie counting on my own, but I got the basis of it all from Slimming World and I still eat those meals,” she said. “It gave me help with cooking my own meals from scratch. Before, I would have eaten just convenience food.
“It gives you a lot of help and recipes and there’s a lot of support, it definitely gave me the confidence to go on, on my own.”
For anyone out there who wants to begin a weight loss journey, Lorraine advises to avoid thinking of a big target number.
“I used to always think of this massive number,” she said. “But this time, I took that and made it more realistic by breaking it into smaller goals. It could be breaking it up into every seven pounds - I tried to lose seven pounds a month.”
Lorraine has an Instagram where she shares some of her meals along with snippets of her life. You can follow it @life_with_loley.
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