Sarah's story

I developed early as a child; I had boobs and hips before leaving primary school. I felt different, and I didn’t like it. I remember attending a slimming group with my Mum in my early teens and had tried my first very low-calorie diet (VLCD) by the age of 16. Years of yo-yo dieting and the desire to find the answer to weight loss began and by the time I left university at age 22, I was a UK size 20. 

Just before I turned 30, I appeared on a TV show about weight loss; the programme was looking for people who wanted to lose at least 10 stone. I had a personal trainer for 2 hours a day, 5 days a week and my diet was completely changed. I was filmed for around 9 months and I lost 8.5 stone (55kg) in weight. I also went from doing very little exercise to completing an Olympic distance triathlon. By the end of the show I felt fitter, I had developed a love of exercise and I was amazed how strong I was.

I’d had the intervention I needed to get to a healthy weight… or so I thought.

Over the next couple of years, I continued to exercise regularly and eat well, however my weight started going back on. Despite all the hours of effort my body simply couldn’t keep the weight off. This made me feel like a failure, out of control and fed up. I recall these were some of the darkest times of my life.

My undergraduate degree was in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and I wanted to understand more about obesity and the science behind it.

I discovered there are over 100 different factors that contribute to why someone might live with obesity* ranging from societal, environmental, physical, biological and psychological factors. In fact, up to 70% can be due to genetics.

This was like a lightbulb moment for me, I had spent over 30 years thinking that the reason that I lived with obesity was because I had bad willpower and that I was too lazy, and then all of sudden I realised that it wasn’t my fault! I could stop blaming and hating myself, I could stop feeling like a failure; It was like a huge weight had been lifted (excuse the pun), and for the first time in my life, I began to feel at peace with myself. 

This realisation and understanding of obesity, has given me a passion to ensure that more people living with obesity understand this and stop blaming and shaming themselves.

Until 2022 treatment options for people living with obesity were very limited, the advice was either eat less and move more or bariatric surgery. Thankfully this landscape has now changed, and we have two really good weight loss medications available privately (Mounjaro and Wegovy), which give hope to people living with obesity that they will be able to manage their obesity sustainably.

I have tried one of the new medications, Semaglutide (Wegovy) and I have lost around 6 stone (38kg) in around 14 months.

Understanding that sometimes your body needs more than diet and exercise is game-changing for people living with obesity. These medical interventions can help you find a new comfortable weight and when combined with new habits on nutrition and exercise can provide long-lasting change for people living with obesity.

Since 2013 I have been volunteering with a UK obesity charity, the driver behind my involvement with the charity was the opportunity to spread the understanding about the complexities of obesity and to allow more people to realise that they don’t need to blame themselves, many of the factors contributing to the fact they live with obesity, are actually out of their control. I want more people to experience that light bulb moment!

(Foresight Report 2007)