A husband and wife team using their experience to inspire others to adopt the low-carb lifestyle

FOR THE JOEL FAMILY!

After 40-odd years of battling to lose weight, Natalie and Howard Joel knew that it was time to make a serious lifestyle change. Together, they committed to eating low-carb, and the dramatic results speak for themselves. Over the years, Natalie Joel steadily put on more and more weight, particularly after the birth of each of her five children. ‘People would say to me: “Don’t worry – when you breastfeed, you’ll lose it,” but it only got worse,’ she says. ‘Between pregnancies I would lose a bit of weight, then it would come right back. I struggled for about 43 years. I tried everything I could think of, but nothing worked.’

Natalie threw herself into exercise: she did boxing three times a week, attended spinning class and swam every day, but still failed to see any changes. ‘I was so tired of feeling the way I did. I was wearing a size XXXL. I had to tailor some of my clothing to fit – I was one size away from being unable to fit into the clothing at Donna!,’ she recalls.

After consulting a dietician, Natalie was given a strict eating plan as well as pills to control her appetite. ‘I tried it and I lost a bit, but after a few weeks I was starving again. So the dietician gave me a stronger pill, but it was the same story all over again.’

Convinced that her sweet tooth was sabotaging her efforts to lose weight, Natalie decided to have herself hypnotised to help curb her chocolate cravings, and made an appointment with psychologist Dr Leonard Carr. But when she explained her weight challenges to Dr Carr, he refused to hypnotise her and told her to try Banting instead. ‘I said: “What? No way! The dietician said they don’t know what the long-term effects are”. He said: “Rubbish! Just try it for six weeks.”

‘He sent me to Dis-Chem to buy everything I needed, told me what to do, and off I went. I told my husband about it and he said,