Eight Stone Lighter And Feeling Great!
Real life
Louise Eaton admits to being “a bit of a diva”. With her long, blond hair, false eyelashes and French polished nails, she enjoys taking care of her appearance. She loves to feel good in her clothes, preferring to wear bold colours that reflect her bubbly personality. And now she can wear dresses nipped in at the waist thanks to shedding nearly eight stone following weight loss surgery.
Yet Louise, from Hove, has been blind from birth and cannot see how wonderful she looks. But she can feel sh he is a size 10 to12 rather th han the size 22 to 24 and 18 st tone she was a year ago.
“I get very emotional when w I put on a smaller dress si ze. Because I can’t see myself, m I find it hard to be elieve, but I do get em motional that I have done th his and achieved this weight lo oss. It has finally helped me to o love myself in a different way w and to feel proud.”
She recently turned 50 and says her weight has been up and down all her life. A self-confessed yo-yo dieter, she tried “every diet you can think of” and although she did lose weight, she always put it back on. Her downfall, she says, were savoury foods like quiche, pasties, crisps and ready meals, regularly raiding the fridge in the middle of the night because she still felt hungry. Louise pinpoints her obsession with food to a traumatic experience when she was at a girls’ boarding school for the blind and visually impaired. “The teachers put me on the ‘fat table’. There were about eight bigger pupils and we were not allowed any cakes annd were made to eat apples s and smaller portions than n the others. They sin ngled us out as if we were w naughty. I felt isolated and it encouraged us to steal food and develop obsessive behaviour towards food. f I was 15 years o ld and nine stone, so not t big at all. “WWhen I think about it now I find it hard to put into words. This experience made me want all the things I couldn’t have. I used to sneak down to the tuckshop and buy chocolate secretly. It did get me to lose weight, but I soon put it back on again.”
By the time she hit 49, Louise weighed 18 stone.
“I couldn’t walk up a hill without getting breathless and was on blood pressure tablets. My weight was really
“I have more energy and feel more vitalised now, so much happier”
telling on my health. I thought ‘I can’t get bigger and bigger, I have to do something about it’.”
Louise’s father had died of a heart attack and she was terrified of the same thing happening to her.
“I wanted to prolong my life. I didn’t want to die at 50 of a heart attack just because I’d been on the fat table!”
Louise began researching weight loss surgery and in spring last year she asked her GP to refer her to The Montefiore Hospital in Hove. In May 2017, she had a gastric sleeve operation under the care of Mr Goldie Khera, bariatric consultant.
“Weight loss surgery is a very personal journey, but it is the best thing I have ever
done. It has completely changed my lifestyle. I don’t feel hungry all the time and I don’t have cravings. I am eating the healthiest I have ever done and I now go to the gym twice a week.”
As the weight came off, Louise began to sleep better and feel happier. The weight loss has given her confidence with her job too. Louise is an evidential medium, doing private readings from her home, as well as president of the Brotherhood Gate Spiritual Church in Brighton.
“I used to get very nervous before public readings and coughed a lot, but since I lost weight I feel more confident and the coughing thing has stopped. I would like to do larger public readings now and have even booked a large venue for next year.”
The good news is she recently came off her blood pressure tablets, too.
“I have more energy and feel more vitalised now, so much happier. Although I can’t see myself, I know I look great. And the irony is, I weigh the same as I did when I was on the fat table!”