Sometimes people are just so busy they can’t look after their health
Gastric band op a life-changer for 36-yr-old
A FORMER Operation Transformation participant has told how she lost 10 stone in six months after battling with her weight for most of her life.
After decades of dieting Samantha King, 36, finally decided to ask for help and has shed 140lb since having gastric band surgery last June.
The Wicklow woman said her weight started to creep up while she was in college, and after years of saying “diet starts Monday” she decided it was time to try another route. Samantha said: “I had this awareness of starting to diet even from my secondary school days.
“Even in the last 10 to 15 years for me, every Monday was a new diet. Every Monday was the fresh start.
“I tried every slimming club, every diet that you could name. I did a stint on Operation Transformation.
“I really did absolutely everything to try and shift it, but nothing ever worked for me.”
Samantha said she was putting so much time into starting her new business – King Hair and Beauty – that her health began to suffer.
She said: “You’re getting up in the morning, and you’re straight into the think that it’s people who are just office. sitting at home depressed, don’t want
“You’re there to maybe 9pm, and to and get out and walk and it’s like, then all of a sudden you give yourself ‘Oh it’s simple just stop eating
18 a minute, and you think, oh and start moving’, and my God, I haven’t eaten sometimes that’s not the today and I’m starving. case.
“Then I’m kind of justifying “Sometimes people are to myself saying, well so busy minding kids or you have to eat something, running around after
months – how long just get a takeaway on the everybody else or looking
Samantha had to way home, and you could wait for surgery after their business or have 2,000 or 3,000 calories whatever it is to the before you even realise it, detriment of their own and then you’re getting straight into bed. I think sometimes people health.” Samantha said there were times when she was so immersed in getting the business off the ground that she had no time for grocery shopping.
She added: “I wasn’t prioritising myself and the walk and making sure I had food prep done, and all of the things that I would prioritise now.
“A couple of years ago I just thought, this is starting to affect me now.
“I feel like my breathing is maybe a bit more under pressure than it had been. I probably would have been fairly fit for my size, but it had started to become hard, much harder than it had ever previously.”
After a friend told Samantha she
I’ve given it socks and I think it’s OK to ask for help SAMANTHA KING YESTERDAY
was going to get a gastric bypass and it could be something that would be good for her, she admitted she was shocked.
She said: “I felt quite negative towards it... I was ‘no I can do this myself. I can do this. I can get this under control’.
“But there was a bit of a turning point for me where I said, ‘Do you know what? I’ve done everything. I can honestly say that I really tried, and I’ve really given it socks, and I think it’s OK now to ask for help’.”
Samantha finally underwent her gastric bypass operation on June 14 last year, after an 18-month wait.
She said: “When I finally accepted that it was going to take a bit of a waiting period, I just said to myself, ‘OK, this is the time to work on my head’. Why am I doing this? Why do I need this? And why is this going to work? Because the other things didn’t’.
“I really wanted to make sure that I was going to do what I have to do to make it a success for myself, so I just kind of worked on all of that stuff and straight after the operation, I just felt immense relief. I could see it instantly… the first week or two I lost 24lbs, it was bananas and then it just kept coming off, coming off and off.
“As of today I’ve lost 10 stone since the day of my operation, and in the lead up to that, I had lost another stone so 11 stone in total in the last, six or seven months. It’s just absolutely mindblowing stuff.”