The Dunne deal

For Dr Sumi Dunne, life has always been a journey with many turns, something that she also sees in her role as Operation Transformation’s resident medical expert. Donal O’donoghue talks to her

I’m talking to Sumi Dunne and she’s talking journeys. There are the physical journeys – her immigrant parents who moved to London from India in the 1960s, her own relocation from England to the Irish midlands in 1999 – and the journeys too of the heart and mind. Life is the big one, of course, but more immediate, and measurable, is the day to day. Operation Transformation, the RTÉ reality show that taps into the resolution of ‘New Year, New You’, is such a beast. In recent seasons, it has increasingly focused on mental well-being, a tale of what can be as much as a tale of the measuring tape. And Dr Mousumi ‘Sumi’ Dunne, who has been OT’S resident medical expert since 2019, knows better than most that any journey can have many turnings.

It’s just after 8.15 in the morning and, as ever, it’s helter-skelter in the Dunne home in County Laois. Sumi is doing the school run as we talk by phone, moving from home to car, as she drops off three of her four children (aged 10, 16, 18 and 20) before heading into her day job as a GP in Portarlington. She also lectures at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin and every Saturday for the next eight weeks, or so she will be busy filming Operation Transformation. It seems life was ever thus for Dunne, an only child who, during college holidays, met a man from Offaly (Matt) in a bar in Kathmandu. “If you asked my university self on the cusp of graduation from medical school if I ever saw myself living in Ireland, I would never have imagined it. In those days, my dreams were set on the other side of the Atlantic. But it’s amazing where your journey brings you.” Another stepping stone is Operation Transformation. “The show has evolved into a space where we are looking at all the health components and not just one aspect. It has become a holistic health show where we are looking at parameters of cardiovascular health, water intake, cholesterol levels and the rest. It’s more and more about health rather than just a weight target, where you must hit those numbers. Some people have a background of ongoing illnesses, and the thing is to emphasise that you should not allow that to limit your general health in any way. We have leaders who are representative of so much of the population who might be carrying chronic disease, but we also show how people have learned to modify and adapt and live with their chronic illness.” Down the years, Operation Transformation has been criticised for body shaming and putting entertainment ahead of all else. Sumi Dunne, who joined the show in 2019, believes that such charges are no longer valid. “From the time I joined, I haven’t seen any

situation where the leaders felt that they were compromised in any way. We have a duty to be supportive to the leaders, on camera and off. I cannot comment on anything that happened before I joined the show as I wasn’t part of it. There was an issue with what people were wearing for the weigh-ins, but all the leaders are now happy with the tracksuits, t-shirts and trainers. More than anything, making changes that are going to help type 2 diabetic outcomes, cardiovascular outcomes or high blood pressure is the show’s key message.”

Working on OT has prompted Sumi to take stock of her own life and how she lives it. “I have always tried to keep fit and eat healthily,” she says (she is a fan of fast walking and has a mainly vegetarian diet). “But what I have become more cognisant of in recent years is looking after my own mental well-being. I’m a mum, I’m a GP, I’m a lecturer, I get involved in the community, I have been a daughter to older parents before they passed away, but I wasn’t very good at making time for me. That’s what the show has taught me. So now, I take the time to read a book or to get out into nature and the show has taught me the importance of that. So many of us aren’t that good at minding ourselves but we need to be, in a world that is ever more challenging. Life is not all about work.”

And yet, Sumi seems to be in perpetual motion, champion of many causes, including childhood vaccination, community activism and menopause awareness. “I also support women who are in coercive or controlling relationships at a GP level and I’m also supportive of children and teen mental health. It’s not dissimilar to all the other issues that I’m interested in. It’s all about keeping us well as a community.”

OT is part of that picture. “I’m meeting people who are now saying to me that having hit a certain landmark age, they are going to get their bloods or blood pressure checked. We are involved with that on January 18, which is National Blood Pressure Day, and pharmacies have got involved. Those elements are all part of a good health journey.”

One of her biggest OT fans is her 10-yearold daughter. “‘Mummy, your hair! Not good’ she says. Or she might comment on the shoes that I’m wearing but very often she says how much she likes the leaders and asks how they are doing.” While Sumi might pitch herself as a practitioner of tough love, it’s not as simple as that. “Be kind and always be true”, advice instilled in by her late mother, Dipali, informs all she does, in life and on the TV show. “Some people on the show think that their journey should have gone another way but we’re trying to move them away from ‘you should have done that’ to what they can do now. There is a lot to be learned from kindness, being kind to others and yourself. I tell my children regularly that kindness is a superpower.”

Sumi’s father, Priya, who died on New Year’s Eve, lived in his later years in the family home in Laois, a doting father and grandfather. “Not that long ago, Dad said to me that your journey in life is so much easier if you have the capacity to forgive,” she says. “Forgiveness makes it all much easier. We are all human and thus flawed but imperfection has its own beauty. So, rather than focusing on someone’s flaws, forgive. Those words chime with my mother’s words on kindness. It was incredibly tough for them when they first moved to London in the 1960s. Like so many other immigrants in those days, so-called ‘coloured’ people were not welcome. But my father worked nights, my mother worked days, doing it all for me, and focusing on my education. I’ll never forget that.”

I imagine that during these OT days, Dunne must be a local celebrity. She laughs. “When the geniuses who do my make-up for TV aren’t there, I blend into the background,” she says. “The only time I get stopped is when people say to me that they recognise the voice. But it’s lovely to get recognised and to talk with people about the show and related matters.” Unlike her OT predecessor, Ciara Kelly, Dunne has no plans to leave her role as a GP to work full-time in the media. “I’m a GP and I’m very happy being a GP and I also adore lecturing,” she says. “And every year I get to work on Operation Transformation as long as they will have me.” When the Leaving Cert is done for her 18-year-old, she hopes to travel to her father’s birthplace in Myanmar, another journey freighted with significance.

So many of us aren’t that good at minding ourselves but we need to be, in a world that is ever more challenging