Debra’s Maritz’s lifechanging weight-loss journey
and more confident than ever!
After losing the weight she had been battling with since her teens, Debra Maritz has managed to keep it off for nearly a decade.
Debra Maritz’s life-changing weight-loss journey started in January 2010 when her sister tagged her in a photo on Facebook. The pic showed Debra and her husband flanking their Grade 1 son in his brand-new school uniform. Although she’s beaming proudly at the camera, Debra (45) was so shocked by her appearance that she removed the tag immediately.
She had been struggling with her weight and body image since her teenage years, and despite desperate yo-yo dieting and trying every eating plan she could find, her weight had climbed to 73kg. Nothing seemed to work for her long-term, and her self-confidence had hit an all-time low.
She just couldn’t understand why she kept getting bigger – she was eating the same food as
the rest of her family, and they weren’t picking up weight. ‘I was unhappy with my body but I didn’t know why I looked the way I did, or how to change it. ’
Debra’s diet consisted of toast or granola for breakfast, a toasted sandwich or pasta salad for lunch, and veg, meat and potatoes for dinner.
On weekends, the family was active. Her husband likes to surf, so she and the kids would often go along to the beach with him. ‘We were never really couch potatoes… I didn’t smoke or drink excessively either. But being active didn’t make a difference because I was eating the wrong things, which I didn’t know at the time.’
Tired of feeling ashamed, Debra knew she had to get out of the dark place she was in. ‘Thankfully, that was exactly when Tim Noakes appeared on the scene, and low-carb products started becoming available,’ she says.
The reasoning behind the LCHF lifestyle made sense to her, so Debra decided to give it a try. Plus she could still eat so many of the things she loved, like eggs, bacon and full-cream yoghurt.
‘It was literally about a week into the diet when I suddenly had cheekbones and collarbones. My sinuses cleared up, my digestion was better, my skin was better – everything was better,’ she says.
She realised her high-carb intake was the reason she’d kept gaining weight when her family wasn’t. ‘I didn’t eat badly; I just ate the wrong foods for my body. They just didn’t agree with me.’
‘WE WERE NEVER REALLY COUCH POTATOES; IT WAS A NORMAL LIFESTYLE. I DIDN’T SMOKE OR DRINK EXCESSIVELY EITHER.‘
Debra stuck with the low-carb diet, and by 2013 she’d lost 10kg. To this day, a decade since starting LCHF, she’s kept it all off with ease, weighing in at 63kg in January.
These days, Debra doesn’t follow the LCHF way of eating as strictly, as she’s trying to maintain her weight rather than lose it. But she still sticks to the basics. When celebrating a birthday, she allows herself a very small piece of cake. She also spends 10 to 15 minutes a day jumping on a trampoline at home to get her lymphatic system going. This helps to get rid of toxins in the system that the body struggles to eliminate by itself, she says.
While her family now eats much fewer carbs than before, they haven’t completely adopted Debra’s low-carb lifestyle. Every night, she prepares a meal for them, and an adapted version for herself. ‘If I decide to make wraps, they’ll have the wraps and I’ll replace the wrap with lettuce leaves for myself.’
Since losing the weight, Debra has gained the confidence to do things she would never have done before. Two years into her diet, she decided to get braces because she felt she was worthy of having the confidence to smile at people rather than ‘just looking away’.
At 73kg, when shopping with friends, she’d try on different clothes – and end up crying and cancelling when nothing looked right on her. ‘I thought people would judge me,’ she says. ‘I felt like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, where the ladies in the shop thought she didn’t belong. Now I just go to my closet, put my clothes on – and go.’
After losing the 10kg, Debra also decided to pursue her dream and started her own clothing label. Before embarking on her weight-loss journey, she had worked in a corporate environment, because she didn’t feel she could advise people about how to dress when she didn’t look good or feel good about herself. She currently works full-time as a clothing designer. ‘I now have the confidence to do that. I make clothes that I would wear, that I like and that I know will make me feel good. Otherwise I feel like I can’t sell them to someone else.’
Her top tip for would-be banters? Always have some biltong or nuts in your car in case you get hungry – that’s when you tend to buy something unhealthy. Also, if going onto a full-on low-carb diet seems daunting, she suggests eating a few carbs only when the sun is up (it’s so easy to binge on carbs when it’s cold and dark).
Debra emphasises the importance of a healthy mindset, and says her biggest achievement is that she’s now comfortable enough to be in the spotlight and do her own thing. So much so that for the new clothing line that she’s working on with a friend, Debra feels confident enough to be the face of the brand and appear in photos for the website.
‘I want to be seen; I want to be in photos – I like the way I look!’ she says.