We were delighted to welcome Dr. Paula Gilvarry to the podcast chair to tell us about her weight loss journey. Dr. Gilvarry is recently retired and is also the author of a most amazing recipe book, ‘Doctor on a Diet;’ more about that later.
According to Paula she was dieting for most of her life, probably since the age of 16. She lost weight and put it all back on again. As she said, “I’d tried every diet in the book.”
Over 20 years go Paula contacted Motivation and was successful in losing weight but unfortunately, she put it back on. As she admits, she reverted back to her old habits, really not having learned what the problem was.
The years passed by and just over 2 years ago, around the time she retired, Paula took stock of her life. She had a lot of weight on. She thought to herself that she didn’t want to be too heavy to be lifted, didn’t want to be a burden on people. She wanted to be able to run after her grandchildren and maintain a normal healthy life.
Paula contacted Motivation again but it took her 6 months to get in motion. She picked her daughter’s birthday, the 9th June as her start date.
One month into her new Motivation programme she was a stone down but then discovered she had a serious medical condition. Diagnosed as suffering from heart arrhythmia, Paula was told that it can be easily controlled by medication but also, that for every 10% reduction in body weight, she would reduce the risk of the actual fibrillation recurring by 10%
As Paula says, “it was a kind of no-brainer. I had started with the pleasure principle of losing weight, now I had the pain principle as well,”
As a life-long foodie, Paula decided to pursue her own range of healthy recipes. With advice from some good friends, Nevin Maguire and Francis Brennan, Paula secured a publishing contract with Gill who, in 2018, published ‘Doctor On a Diet’ by Dr. Paula Gilvarry.
Paula offers some advice on how to approach the Motivation Weight Management weight loss programme. Important not just to in thinking you’re on a diet. You have to listen and you have to learn.
Some of her friends who did just that are delighted – they figured out why this is happening (overeating) to me and how they can stop it happening again.
Paula’s podcast with Aisling Connolly covers a lot of other points and the podcast is well worth a listen.
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