In 2010, mother of 3, Emma Boronat, was refused life insurance due to her unhealthy weight. At the time she was angry with the insurance company for not having the correct policy for her, trying every way to shift the blame rather than taking responsibility herself.
But she knew she had to do something. Inspired by the amazing weight loss of celebrity wife and businesswoman Jackie Llewelyn-Bowen with LighterLife, Emma joined in January 2011 and has kept the weight off ever since.
Eating and weight gain
“Thinking back I can’t really put a reason on why I ate the way I did. I was a skinny little girl but once puberty hit, I just grew. Food was always a big part of my life. I loved to bake for family and enjoyed fine dining on the weekends with friends.”
In fact Emma was a complete foodie. Bread, cheese and butter were her favourites:
“I always leant towards heavily carbohydrate meals. I would eat beyond fullness and through boredom. I didn’t know what full or hunger felt like, I’d just eat for the sake of it. If we went out for meals, I’d have three courses, olives to nibble on in between, and a coffee liqueur for after. I just loved food.”
“I didn’t want to be a fat mum”
Emma met her husband, Gabriel, when she was 16. She was big at the time, but he loved her for who she was:
“We got married in 1994 and I soon fell pregnant. It wasn’t until then that my weight started to bother me. I remember I’d stare at the obese mothers at the school gates. I didn’t want my children to be ashamed of me. I remember making a promise to my unborn child that I wouldn’t be a fat mum. But I carried on eating.”
Emma went on to have two more children. Her husband worked away during the week and she’d spend her evenings gorging on ice cream:
“I couldn’t run after my kids, I couldn’t really play any sport. I was very restricted… I was proud of the way my children, Tom, Poppy and Tilly turned out, but the girls were going to be teenagers soon and I didn’t want my issues with food to impact negatively on their body image.”
As the years went by Emma always had a New Year’s resolution to lose weight and tried many different diets plans, but they just didn’t work for her.
“We’d get weighed weekly and find out we had lost or put on a few pounds, then either celebrate or commiserate after with a meal or a night in the pub. It was that constant twisted logic of celebrating weight loss with food. I did it every single time.
Health scares
On one occasion, Emma even thought she’d had a stroke:
“I was carrying so much weight on my face that it just wasn’t moving in the way I thought it should. I had such a fright that I went on a diet and lost three stone. But at that point in my life I hadn’t tackled my emotional eating habits and soon fell back into old ways.
“My family were worried about me because I was talking about how unhappy I was. They were so used to me being the life and soul of the party. I was unhappy, but I was unhappy with me, not my life.”
A new perspective with LighterLife
Over the course of her weight loss journey with LighterLife, Emma realised that her relationship with food was based around the process of making food and giving to others, not necessarily eating it. For the first time in her life, she learned how to listen to her body when she was full:
Emma never had a goal weight in mind; her goal was always to reach a healthy BMI. She discovered she’d buried her feelings for a very long time, and it was the LighterLife group work that helped her understand how she used food to deal with her emotions.
“As the weight started to come off, I learned I had a lot more control over my body than I ever gave myself credit for.”
LighterLife weight loss success
Since joining LighterLife, Emma and her family have moved to London to start a new life:
“I always considered London as this fashionable, skinny lifestyle, and there’d never be room for a person like me. I’d lived in Manchester all my life and had daily contact with my mum and sister. I actually feel independent now, but still incredibly close to them. Thanks to LighterLife, I feel that I can stand on my own and I won’t fall over, whereas I think I leaned on people before.”
These days Emma is looking forward to her summer holiday:
“We’re renting houses around a pool, and I can’t wait! I won’t hide under a towel like I usually do. I’ll jump in the pool in my swimsuit and feel fantastic! I will not be the observer this year, I will be the participant… and I plan to be for the rest of my life.”
*Each of our client’s results and stories are unique to them and their experience of LighterLife. Your own results will be personal to you and may vary.
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