"Specialist Weight Management Programme"

At the beginning of my journey, I was like a "hamster on a wheel", going on diet after diet, and joining slimming club after slimming club - over and over again.  I had limited initial success with every diet - always succumbing to "secret eating" chocolate, biscuits, cakes, crisps etc.   I felt dreadful for lying to my loving and very supportive husband - I was out of control and "hooked" on sugary, refined carbohydrates, and was desperate to get my daily "fix", no matter what it did to my body.  The constant yo-yo dieting took its toll on my health - mental as well as physical, as I was confused, frustrated and tearful - with intense feelings of guilt and self disgust.

Mairi, Specialist Weight Management Dietitian at Nairn Town & County Hospital, has supported and respected me from the very first time I met her, just over a year ago.  She taught me how to love and enjoy "real" food, not sugary rubbish which fuelled my worsening diabetes and impaired my overall health and wellbeing.  She helped to steer me in the right direction, to address and conquer my emotional hang ups about food, and to feel true pleasure from eating delicious, healthy food - not perpetual guilt from secret eating.  I am a different person today - happy, confident, with reachable goals and ambitions for the year ahead - and for the rest of my life.  I no longer crave unhealthy refined carbohydrates, and I enjoy visiting the fruit and vegetables section in the supermarket, and love to munch sweet cherry tomatoes and raw carrot batons!  The change in my mindset is incredible, and although my clinical measurements have modestly improved, there has been a lot of worry and stress with illness in the family this year - but, despite all that, and my inability to exercise very much due to chronic back and neuropathic pain, I am 100% determined to continue my quest to get slim and healthy in 2018 - and, hopefully, free from a lot of my medication.

Without Mairi, there is no guarantee that I would still be here today.  I am an intelligent woman, and could easily have researched the best "diets" - as, indeed, I did, repetitively!  However, in my case, all the knowledge and research in the world was useless - I was on a path to self destruction and deteriorating health.  Obesity is so very damaging to health.  I do not believe that bariatric surgery is the answer for most obese people - it may well assist in rapid weight loss, but it offers no healing for the mind, for for the deep underlying reasons why a person has a weight problem and a negative relationship with food.

I would urge NHS Commissioners to continue to fund Specialist Weight Management programmes for obese people in Scotland - diet sheets are not the answer!