Changing my life- Karen's story
"I went to see my GP and I had my yearly checkup, and I was diagnosed pre-diabetic, so I was offered a place on this course. I found every session so useful, learnt so much, and the book, I call it my Bible, that you get, and you must read that book when you're on this programme, because it's so helpful. and looking at labels when you're shopping. Don't just buy something off the shelf in a supermarket. You need to look at everything."
"Every week I've made progress. I never thought I'd be able to lose any weight. I thought, I'm this weight now, overweight, and I don't know, I'm going to lose weight on this programme. But it's all about looking at that book, reading it, understanding, getting support, and just thinking, you know what, I'm going to do this. And I have."
"I'm not just pleased; I'm absolutely overjoyed because I'm so much fitter as well. I'm walking now a lot more and I'm going out a lot more and seeing people where before I just, in winter, or on an evening, I'd just sit at home and eat biscuits and cups of tea. But now you think, right, I'll go out. I'll walk to somebody's, my friend's house and I'll walk back. And I just feel a lot, I can't tell you how better I feel. Okay, yeah, I love it."
"I would say when you go to your first session, you're thinking, well, this is not for me. I don't think I can stick this because that's what I felt. But you have to persevere and give it a go because you get lots of support and help and it's every month. So you've got a month to change your lifestyle and every month and you keep at it and keep at it. And when your lifestyles change like mine, then you just feel so good in yourself, you feel better and people notice that you look better and sound better because you've lost so much weight."
"Five years ago my fingers were so fat that I had to buy a new wedding ring and my old wedding ring's been in my jewellery blocks and we're losing weight I thought I'll just try it on see if it fits me again and it does fit me I'm overjoyed that I've got my original wedding ring back on. Yay!"