An Irish mum has shared how she shed a massive four and a half stone by making two simple lifestyle changes.
Lisa O'Connor said she made the decision to prioritise her health at the beginning of the pandemic after hearing that overweight people were at a higher risk of ending up in ICU with the virus.
She said: "I think anyone who is overweight always knows in the back of their head they need to do something. I tried a few times, but I just think the why wasn't strong enough for me. I was grand. That's the only way to describe it.
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"I was fine with the way things were. I wasn't overly happy, but then I saw something in the news when the pandemic started, and they were saying that overweight people were one of the high-risk people that were ending up in ICU and I remember that my daughter was only about five or six weeks old and I have two other kids as well and I was thinking 'Jesus imagine now if I end up in ICU and I end up really, really sick because I was never bothered enough to get up and do something about it'.
"It was just, like that, overnight, I was no, that's not going to be my story."
To achieve her weight loss goals, Lisa decided to begin calorie counting and get more exercise by going for walks with her children.
She said: "I had calorie counted years before, so I knew kind of what to do. Once you have a baby, I think you've got the buggy and all of a sudden, this lockdown had started, and I had these kids at home, and the buggy and I was like 'Oh god, get me outside' so we would go for big long walks and counting the calories in and out, and that's how it started."
As the pounds started to fall away, Lisa began sharing progress updates with her friends and family, which eventually led to her sharing her journey on social media.
"My family and my friend were like, 'Oh my god, Lisa, you look great', and I was actually sending them on Snapchat, and they were like , 'keep them coming. This is great', but then after a certain amount of time, you kind of feel like you're shoving it down people's throat, and I'm a big believer in you can't force anyone to do anything they have to want to do it themselves. So my first thing was like do you know what? I'll start a wee Instagram page I'll invite them into.
"My plan was to have it on private, and that way, if they wanted to see it, they could. But I didn't set it up private. It was actually public, and I had gone to bed. I woke up, and I had all these followers, and I was like, well, I can't put it on private now. It was out there already. It just kind of took off from there."
Lisa now shares with her followers the quick and easy meal plans that helped her find healthier alternatives to the foods her family enjoys without losing flavour.
She said: "For me, the whole weight loss had to be something that was doable, and people talk an awful lot about willpower and things like that. Willpower isn't, in my opinion, something that comes naturally. It's hard. It's why people struggle to lose weight, but if you do something that you really, really enjoy, you're going to stick at it, the willpower will just fall in.
"So for me getting outside with the kids, it was a fun family activity. It was first about that. The exercise came second. So when I had my Fitbit or my smartwatch on when we were out walking, and you'd see, oh wow, I've burned 300 calories. Maybe I'll do that again tomorrow. The kids had fun. It wasn't effort on my behalf. And then I started walking a bit faster and saw that kind of go up.
"Then with the calorie counting, I really enjoy food. I think most people who are overweight the problem is they enjoy food too much, so I really enjoy like flavours and things like that, so it was really important for me if I was going to do it, that I wasn't replacing it with something really boring."
Lisa added: "When people think of diets, that's what you think of. So I was like, what do we as a family enjoy eating, and how can I adapt that so it fits into what I want to do weight loss wise but also that I can give my kids. I'm only cooking once. So it became about that.
"I would think, okay, what way do I normally cook this, or what can I replace that with. So I never lost the flavours. I never lost having to cook just the one meal. The kids don't even notice that anything's changed.
"Obviously, they don't need to calorie count whereas I weigh out my portion and I just give them a normal portion or my partner would eat double what id have. he'd have two portions of the same thing, but it's still only cooking one meal."
Being a busy mum of four and step-mum of two, Lisa says she has to be organised when planning her meals.
She said: "So having such a busy house it has to be something that is easily doable without being too much effort or it was never going to be sustainable.
"I have to organise to make it all fit in, so I get up in the morning and organise my lunch for work and my dinner before the kids are even up out of bed, so then when I get home from school or from work and the kids are home from school dinners done everything's done. We have the evening.
"So what we've been doing is putting the kids in the buggy, get the bikes out, and we're walking over to this park because the evenings are still bright, and we're back home in time then, and we're having our dinner. So we're still able to get that in the walk in, as well as the dinners done, and we're still having our family time.
"So even the fact of planning my food is giving me back the time to spend with the family in the evenings. Where I remember, years ago, when I had my son, I wasn't that organised. I just got up, went to work got him home. By the time I got him home and then cooked dinner, it was his bedtime, and we had no time for anything, so not only am I having my food all organised before I've automatically created this extra time with the kids and we're all getting outside, and I'm getting my walk in."
Lisa added: "I sit down on a Saturday, and I plan my meals for the next week, and I would order my online shop, so it comes on a Sunday morning. Everything has to be just easy, and like that, then I organise it in a way that if I have to prep the night before and it's going to take an awful lot of work, I make sure that was a day where I didn't have much cooking to do when I came in for work.
"I get the kids to bed, and I do all my chopping, and I'd have the food storage bags, so in the morning, it's just a matter of emptying it into the slow cooker or you know when I come in in the evening it's just a matter of throwing it into the pan everything's chopped and ready from the night before because I find the prep is the hardest bit sitting chopping and it's not that it's hard it's the most time-consuming."
If you would like to check out Lisa's healthy meal plans you can visit her Instagram page irishcaloriequeen or click here.
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