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“I have made so many positive changes to my life”

Like so many women, Fleur was used to the calorie-counting, fad-diet, gym-membership weight loss industry. But by switching to a focus around health & wellbeing, she was able to find the small changes that worked for her lifestyle, lose 20lbs and feel so much better!

My name is Fleur, I’m 45 years old and I live in Hove with my husband of 15 years and our little poodle Coco. I’m a self-employed Business Analyst and have now worked from home solidly since March 2020. I have 3 step children, the youngest is 17 who lives with us part time and is just about to do her A-levels.

Before joining BeeZee Bodies I was falling into some really bad eating habits over lockdown… I was used to travelling quite a bit with work, so as soon as I was anchored to the house all day, the temptation was so strong to just eat all the time, and eat the wrong things.

At the start of the pandemic, I had really good intentions, I was taking the dog out for long walks in the morning before work and setting up a little exercise circuit in the garden just to ensure I was moving around – but this soon fell by the wayside.

I’ve had a neck problem for a while which I think is due to years of leaning over a laptop, but it has never caused me too many issues until I stopped exercising and putting on weight, then it really started to cause me pain.

Don’t get me wrong, I had been putting on weight slowly over the past 10 years and wasn’t happy about it, but I was fairly active and used to plan out a whole week’s meals and did try to eat healthily, but the pandemic restrictions really did escalate this issue in a short space of time. We were at the stage of probably 2-3 takeaways a week and the meals in between were pretty much easy freezer meals, nothing fresh and all very beige!

I had got to the point where I was putting on weight rapidly and the more I didn’t exercise the more my neck was hurting from sitting all day working and now my sleep was being affected.

I was starting to look and feel a bit of a mess, looking back it’s surprising how quickly you can fall into bad habits that can affect every part of your life.

One day I was on my doctor’s website looking up their opening times when I noticed they had a section about weight loss, in here I saw an article on BeeZee Bodies. It sounded exactly what I needed and I was so surprised to find out it was council funded. All I had to do was apply and see what happened, so that’s exactly what I did!  Within a day or two a lovely lady called Sue called me to chat through the program, the locations of meetings, what each meeting would consist of and if I was still interested. That was in August 2021 and I started in September.

During the course and since finishing, I am just amazed at how much I have learned. The small things from what your portion size should be, to really knowing what the labels on foods mean and what you should be looking for (not what the manufacturers want you to see).

My nutritionist was particularly helpful in talking me through Low GI foods. I had found for some time that I would get the shakes during the day depending on what I had eaten for breakfast and this would make me want to reach for high amounts of sugar to counteract the effect, which of course then meant a big slump later. I am now much more knowledgeable about what types of foods help with this and it’s something that I use pretty much every day.

The exercise was an unexpected surprise, one week it would be circuits and the next yoga, so you could try different types of exercises, and the booklet on things you can do at home has been really useful.   After years of being a member of various gyms I now know that they are not for me and I have actually found exercises that I really enjoy and am happy to do 3-4 times a week.

I have made so many positive changes to my life, the main ones are smaller portion sizes, looking for and being aware of triggers and not forgetting that you can have all foods but it’s about factoring them in to your day instead of using the concept of a ‘treat’.

BeeZee Bodies is not specifically about weight loss – and to begin with this is a bit of an alien concept as everything we do or read is about weight loss, calorie counting, fad diets etc but looking at eating and exercise habits from a general health and well-being stance is really a great way to start your journey. Learning about habits and your ‘inner chimp’ was definitely a light bulb moment for me.

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience of the BeeZee Bodies program, the team were so knowledgeable and non-judgemental, and the other members of the group were really lovely. 

In total I have now lost 20lbs in weight and I have lost 8inches off my waist, which has made a huge difference to the way I feel.