LighterLife counsellors help men and women lose 5,253 stone

While many of us are contemplating how to get in shape for the festive season men and women in West Yorkshire are jumping with joy after losing 5,253 stone – the equivalent of FIVE double decker buses - with the help of LighterLife Weight-Management Counsellors across the region.

With the largest cluster of LighterLife counsellors in the country, spread across Pudsey, the city centre, Roundhay, Horsforth, Morley and Shipley, the Yorkshire gang are using specialist techniques, counselling and promoting eating nutritionally balanced bars, soups, shakes and meals, to see the pounds literally dropping off across West Yorkshire.

Melanie Ellyard, Pudsey and Leeds city centre counsellor, commented: "Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Transactional Analysis (TA) mean not only do people lose weight, but they explore the reasons why they put on weight – because there's usually a bit more to it than simply 'eating too much'.

"Visitors to our website www.lighterlife.com can now download a podcast with lots of advice and tips on how they can get in shape for Christmas."

Local lady Peg Alexander, aged 42, has lost almost 7 stone on the LighterLife eating plan, dropping from a size 22 to a size 10, and it has helped her control Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCO), a medical condition, which affects 10% of women aged between fifteen and fifty in the UK.

Five ft tall Peg, who weighed in at over fifteen stone and now weighs 8½, originally thought PCO controlled her weight, but through LighterLife she has found she's the one now in control of the PCO through maintaining a healthy diet.

Peg commented: “I was diagnosed with quite severe Polycystic Ovary Syndrome in my late 20s, by which time I'd already started to put on weight. By my late 30s I was a size 20-22 - not great when you're only 5ft tall.

"Because I wanted to become eligible for fertility treatment I knew I had to get my weight down and also I was fed up of being so large. But I believed that conventional diets wouldn’t work because of my PCOs, and I didn’t know how I would keep up my motivation if they didn’t work.

"I then decided to do LighterLife as I knew some other people who had done it successfully and smiled all the way through, plus I read that it actually works for many women with PCOs. Peg was in abstinence for 7 ½ months and lost 7 stone, becoming a size 10."

Peg adds: "I was also convinced that I would never be able to keep the weight off because of the PCOs. But again I was wrong. Whilst in abstinence I did loads of reading about low GI diets and prepared for a totally new way of cooking and eating.

"The most important thing for me was fully following the re-introduction of food programme to the letter. This way I totally re-educated myself and my eating – and I found that now I love low GI foods that I was really scared of before."

By eating the right kind of foods, and cooking fresh meals herself, Peg is still wearing her size 10 clothes, 2 years after losing the weight.

Mel adds: "LighterLife help members understand why they overeat and teach new ways to think about and behave around food, leading to lighter living for the long-term future."

Peg finishes: "I went for an ultra scan recently and my specialist told me he could only see one cyst. I couldn't believe it until I looked at the scan for myself. I was used to seeing as many as thirty or forty PCOs showing up on my scans.

"I'm sure it is down to the weight loss and management programme with LighterLife that has helped me manage my PCO."

Each LighterLife member is allocated the support of a LighterLife Weight-Management Counsellor who is there from the start of the programme and continues to offer support in weight-management for as long as they are needed.

Contact your local counsellor and find out how to start living your Lighter Life!

-Ends-

NOTES TO EDITORS

Other case studies and diet tips are available
Image 1 is Peg before the weight loss. Images 2 and 3 are Peg after losing nearly seven stone and image 4 is the LighterLife logo.
LighterLife is a weight-loss and weight-management programme for people who are one stone or more overweight and with a body mass index of 25 or above. Over 200,000 people have successfully lost weight with LighterLife since 1996.
The unique LighterLife approach offers programmes specific to the obese and the overweight in the form of nutritionally balanced soups, shakes and bars combined with specialised counselling using cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and transactional analysis (TA) techniques. Clients benefit not only from rapid, safe weight loss but they also learn the behavioural changes needed to sustain it.
LighterLife counsellors in the Yorkshire region are:
Melanie Ellyard, Pudsey & Leeds City 0113 256 5789. Unit 4 & 5, Booths Yard, Pudsey, Leeds LS28 7AD. Aspire, 1st Floor, 2 Infirmary Street, Leeds, LS1 2JP
Elizabeth Faulkes, Roundhay & Crossgates, 0113 268 9999. 78 Street Lane, Roundhay Leeds, LS8 2AL
Joanne Reilly, Horsforth, 0113 258 1143, 249 Low Lane, Horsforth, Leeds, LS18 5NY
Joanne Jagger, Morley, 0113 307 4428, City Mills Suite GF02, Peel Street, Morley, Leeds, LS27 8QL
Christine Smith, Shipley, 01274 222 610, 3&4 Unit Three Riverdale, Dockfield Road, Shipley, BD17 7AD

For more information contact:
Helen MacGregor
Chocolate PR
helen@chocolatepr.co.uk
0113 236 1835

WEST YORKSHIRE FOLK LOSE FIVE DOUBLE DECKER BUSES