We've lost 25st between us but only ONE of us is on Mounjaro. These are the surprising methods that helped us shed the pounds and how we keep the weight off... so can you guess the jabber? | Retrui News | Retrui
We've lost 25st between us but only ONE of us is on Mounjaro. These are the surprising methods that helped us shed the pounds and how we keep the weight off... so can you guess the jabber?
SOURCE:Daily Mail
Overdone it with the mince piesand yule log this Christmas? You are not alone. Around a third of Britons will be hoping to shed the festive pounds as 2026 begins.
Overdone it with the mince pies and yule log this Christmas? You are not alone. Around a third of Britons will be hoping to shed the festive pounds as 2026 begins.
These days, with all the hype, it’s easy to think weight-loss jabs are the only effective solution. But as these five women, who’ve lost a whopping 25st in total, show, there are in fact a dazzling array of new options.
From ChatGPT to yoga and food weighing, can you guess how each woman reached their target weight? (And, yes, which of them has lost 6st on Mounjaro...)
‘I Googled “food addict” and it changed my life’
BRIGHT LINE EATING
Estate agent owner Sarah Walker, 51, has two daughters, aged 24 and 18, and lives in Richmond upon Thames.
Estate agent owner Sarah Walker, 51, lost four stone after coming across Bright Line Eating, which is a way of eating that treats flour and sugar like addictive substances
When a friend sent me her wedding pictures, I burst into tears. At the time I didn’t have a full length mirror at home so had no idea I looked so fat, says Sarah
Before: 12st
After: 8st
Weight loss: 4st
When a friend sent me her wedding pictures, I burst into tears. At the time I didn’t have a full length mirror at home so had no idea I looked so fat.
I was in denial. For breakfast I’d have sugary pastries, carb-heavy foods for lunch and supper. And if I bought a packet of biscuits, I’d eat the whole lot in one sitting.
After seeing the images, I weighed myself and was horrified. At 5ft 3in, I’d always been a svelte size 10, but after having children I’d gone up to a 12st and a size 16.
That night, I Googled ‘food addict’ and came across Bright Line Eating, which is a way of eating that treats flour and sugar like addictive substances. I paid £500 for a year-long program, with access to coaches and online support.
It’s called ‘Bright Line Eating’ because the boundaries are really clear. No sugar, no flour, three meals a day, and you weigh your food so you’re not guessing portions.
Another key principle is that ‘licks, bites or tastes’ are prohibited. I could only put the food on my list in my mouth.
When you’re a food addict you wake up thinking, ‘What am I eating today?’ But writing down the night before precisely what I was going to eat the following day helped calm the food noise.
As a vegan, breakfast became 4oz of broccoli and 4oz of sweet potato with a seed mix of chia, pumpkin and sunflower, with 4oz of berries and 4oz of soya milk.
For lunch I’d have 4oz tofu, 6oz of roasted veggies (no oil or balsamic) and I could have 6oz of fruit, too.
Initially, I did feel hungry and suffer cravings until my meals were consistent.
My goal weight of 7st 7lbs to 8st 7lbs was based on my height and BMI. I thought there was no way I’d reach it, but within seven months I was down to 8st.
With the help of an in-house stylist at my local department store, I replaced pretty much everything in my wardrobe.
According to BLE founder, Susan Pierce Thompson, ‘landing the plane’ is the hardest part, that’s reaching your goal weight and staying there. But the coach was on hand to help me.
This positive transformation led to other big changes. After 15 years, I found the confidence to leave my unhappy marriage.
I appreciate strictly weighing food is not for the faint hearted; I’ve certainly had wobbles along the way. There’s no denying you need self-discipline and determination.
For example, whenever I go to a restaurant and they don’t have my type of protein portions, I have to take pre-weighed edamame beans to eat with a big salad from the menu. And if I go to a wedding or a party, I have to speak to the caterers beforehand. I’ve even been known to take a packed lunch, and request a clean plate.
But as tricky as it might sound, it’s changed my life. I’d always believed ‘diets don’t work’ but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
‘A neighbour congratulated me for being pregnant when I wasn’t’
THE 1:1 DIET
Sales manager Leah Riley, 37, is married with two children and lives in Essex.
At 5ft 4in and 14st, sales manager Leah Riley, 37, felt sluggish, swollen and bloated, uncomfortable in her tight clothes and with low energy and no confidence
Leah’s eldest son has had six heart operations (he was born a life-limiting congenital heart disease), and when things went well with his health, she would reward herself with Maltesers or Minstrels
Before: 14st 1lb
After: 9st 9lb
Weight loss: 4st 6lb
Last spring, a neighbour pointed at my tummy and said, ‘Congratulations on baby number three!’ I wasn’t pregnant, just overweight. It really stung. That’s when I decided to do something about my size.
Another school mum recommended I contact Loren Knight, a consultant for The 1:1 Diet, which is a calorie-controlled meal replacement plan.
The difference is that Loren addresses emotional and behavioural patterns around food as well as creating a safe, structured eating regimen.
At 5ft 4in and 14st, I felt sluggish, swollen and bloated, uncomfortable in my tight clothes and with low energy and no confidence.
During our first session, Loren started digging into why I had become an emotional eater.
My eldest son is only nine but he’s had six heart operations (he was born with Pulmonary Atresia, a life-limiting congenital heart disease). I explained that when things go well with my son’s health, I reward myself with Maltesers or Minstrels.
Loren was really blunt and said, ‘Leah, you’re not a dog, you don’t reward yourself with treats.’ She encouraged me to reward myself in other ways such as getting my nails done or going for a swim.
With the plan, I began with three balanced readymade meal replacement drinks or soups per day. At step two, I added a small evening meal of protein and veggies.
Step three was two meal replacements plus 600 calories of conventional food. Now I am in ‘maintenance’ where I consume 1,800 to 2,000 calories per day, depending on my exercise levels.
Instead of a bacon sandwich or jam on toast for breakfast, I’ll now have fruit, granola and yoghurt. For lunch it’s eggs on sourdough or an omelette, and chicken and rice or a smaller portion of pasta for dinner.
Loren also introduced me to the concept of mindfulness. This means that before you eat anything, you really think about if you really want it.
If it’s a yes to, say, a Chinese takeaway, I’ll have a glass of water to eliminate any extreme hunger beforehand. Then I’ll really focus on enjoying my food – TV off, chewing slowly – which minimises overeating.
When I reached my target weight of 10 stone after seven months, I celebrated with a new pair of knee-high boots (I’d never been able to zip them up before).
People do ask if I lost weight on fat jabs. While I’m not totally against them, I’m glad I went down this route because it’s totally reset my attitude to food. I’m not weak around snacks now; I can have one biscuit instead of three.
When my neighbour apologised for her comment, I thanked her. Her words were a blessing in disguise.
‘Yoga transformed my body and my mind’
YOGA AND NUTRITION
Civil servant Julie Rendle-Eames, 61, from West Sussex, is married and has three sons and a grandchild.
Civil servant Julie Rendle-Eames, 61, says that yoga was a daily constant which helped her mind and my body change
Before starting a yoga course, Julie had been off work for four months with depression and burn out; she was 11st 3lb, had high blood pressure and her limbs ached with the extra weight
Before: 11st 3lb
After: 8st 3lb
Weight loss: 3st
When I first started yoga three-and-a-half years ago, I sat on my mat and burst into tears. It was May 2022, and I’d been off work for four months with depression and burn out.
Niki Perry of the Blessed yoga studio understood that as a wife, mum and manager, I was juggling a lot of balls in my life.
I’d describe myself as a strong, independent person, yet here I was at 56, feeling very lost and frightened. The studio felt like a safe space.
After a while, I signed up to a month-long yoga programme with daily yoga, a nutritionist and a coach assigned to help you and an active WhatsApp group too.
At that point I was 11st 3lb, had high blood pressure and my limbs ached with the extra weight.
Nutritionist Dominique Ludwig encouraged me to eat as many different types of fruit and vegetables as possible, get familiar with easily accessible protein sources such as yoghurt and chickpeas and to read labels and batch cook.
It wasn’t about calorie counting. If I felt hungry in the afternoon, I wouldn’t snack, instead I was encouraged to look at what I’d eaten at lunchtime.
Had I had enough protein and fibre to fill me up? If I hadn’t I would increase the amount I ate at meal times. In the WhatsApp group too, other members shared pictures of their food, recipes and motivational advice.
I had weekly calls with my coach, too. She explained that we can’t do everything; being kind to myself meant I could give more to others if my needs were met first.
I continued this way of eating afterwards and the weight has just gone. My thinking is that my body went ‘at last!’ Yoga was a daily constant which helped my mind and my body change.
Eighteen months on, I do yoga six times a week and have a strong core and toned arms as a result. I have to pinch myself when I see my reflection in the mirror.
My husband and I eat a minimum of 30 plants a week. I have never eaten so much food, yet I have continued to maintain a healthy weight.
Meanwhile my husband has lost two stone and his diabetes has reversed as a result.
The bottom line is, if you eat healthy food, you will be a healthy weight. And with regular yoga, age is no barrier to being strong and confident in your body.
Photographer and singer Ariane Sherine, 45, lives with her boyfriend and has a 14-year-old daughter in east London.
Photographer and singer Ariane Sherine, 45, has spent £1,050 on Mounjaro so far, but is planning on staying on the drug for the rest of her life. Now a size 10, she loves her new svelte but curvy figure
Shirley decided to try weight loss jabs after she was called ‘a fatty boom-boom’ online
Before: 16st 4lb
After: 9st 13lb
Weight loss: 6st 5lb
For years, I’d tried dieting on my own with no success. I’d start each day having a salad at lunchtime but, hungry by the evening, I’d find myself ordering a large pepperoni pizza, strips of chicken breasts in a creamy garlic sauce, and mac and cheese, with chocolate chip cookie dough and ice cream.
I hadn’t always been big. I weighed seven-and-a-half stone until the age of 30, when anxiety and depression medication saw my weight balloon.
It was as though the tablets turned on the hunger switch in my brain. Suddenly, I was eating a tray of 12 Krispy Kreme doughnuts on my own.
Soon I was stuck in a rut with a BMI of 42, which made me clinically obese.
Even being rushed to A&E with a suspected heart attack didn’t bring me to my senses. Nor a bleed at the back of one eye - a result of high blood pressure.
It was only last year when I uploaded videos of me singing to social media that I saw the light. A fan commented, ‘Wow Ariane. Much fatty? I’m in shock!’
It was such a hurtful comment. But there was no getting away from the fact that at over 16st, I was, as one charmless poster stated, ‘a fatty boom-boom’.
That’s why I decided to try the weight loss jabs in May 2025. I wasn’t eligible for them on the NHS because, as well as being classified morbidly obese, you need to have four comorbidities, such as high blood pressure, diabetes or heart failure.
So I paid for Mounjaro privately. The effect was immediate; pizzas and doughnut? No thank you.
I do suffer with side-effects including nausea (I wear acupressure wrist bands to prevent it) and for the hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar) I’ll have a square of chocolate so I don’t faint. Before, I couldn’t have chocolate in the house without polishing it all off.
Now vegan, I’ll start the day with smashed avocado on toast and for lunch a wholewheat pitta with peanut butter. Edamame spaghetti with soy sauce in the evening gives me lots of protein.
Even though I have spent £1,050 on Mounjaro so far, I’m staying on the drug for the rest of my life. Now size 10, I love my new svelte but curvy figure.
‘I outsourced my diet to AI – and lost 7st in a year’
CHATGPT
Julie Creffield, 47, an innovation director, lives with her 13-year-old daughter in Hertfordshire.
Innovation director, Julie Creffield, 47, programmed AI to focus on five key things: calories, exercise, sleep, energy levels and mindset
Key to her success, says Julie, was the fact that her weight – and food intake – stopped being emotional and became simply information
Before: 21st 3lb
After: 14st 9lb
Total Loss: 7st 6lb
For years, my weight fluctuated wildly due to pregnancy, depression and the stress of being made redundant. There was never any one food to blame; I tended to overeat whatever was around.
I tried everything from veganism to the Zoe app to lose weight. Nothing worked; I’d drop a few pounds but put it straight back on again.
Juggling raising my daughter with work – with a two-hour driving commute – meant I didn’t have time to focus on healthy eating or exercise. So I could never stick to good habits for long.
Then I set upon an idea that changed everything. As part of my work as an innovation director, I used artificial intelligence (AI) to help organisations solve problems. What if AI could help me lose weight?
In November 2024, I set out to lose 7st in a year – that’s 2lbs a week – by outsourcing the thinking, the decision-making, and the planning to AI.
The tech I used wasn’t a ready-made diet app but a GPT (Generative Pre-Trained Transformer). GPTs are custom versions of ChatGPT that users can tailor for specific tasks. That can be anything from learning a language to technical support, or, as in my case, losing weight.
Anyone can create a custom GPT with their own rules. I programmed it to focus on five key things: calories, exercise, sleep, energy levels and mindset.
Each morning it helped me plan my meals according to the weight I wanted to lose each week – it ensured I stayed within a calories deficit (I burnt more calories through exercise than I consumed), reminded me to pack protein based snacks and flagged the stressful bits of the day ahead.
If I was retaining water from a salty meal or hormonal bloat, AI told me. If I was likely to feel hungrier because of my cycle, or because I went too hard at the gym, it told me.
Key to my success was the fact that my weight – and food intake – stopped being emotional and became simply information.
And I’d programmed it to speak to me in a gentle, uplifting way. ‘How about trying this today?’ instead of ‘Well, that was lazy!’ if I slipped up.
Each evening when I logged what I had eaten, the AI would analyse calories, cravings, stress and even the way I tend to eat more freely during busy weeks. It was interpreting my behaviour.
As a result, I didn’t feel hungry and if I did, I’d tell the app and it would suggest a snack. For example I would take photos of two protein bars and it would tell me the best out of the two.
As for exercise, I tried out different classes at my gym and it analysed why some felt good and why others didn’t.
Sleep was a biggie – AI reminded me when I had not had eight hours sleep and would therefore be more tempted by sugar cravings.
Some days were perfect, some were a total write-off, but because AI handled the numbers, I didn’t spiral.
By September, just ten months after I’d started, I’d reached my goal of 7st.
Some people were so proud of me, others were sceptical, reminding me not to to ‘too far’.
Three months on, I only use AI on difficult days. It nudges me when I need it and stays quiet when I don’t.
I hover comfortably around a size 14 bottom and 12 top, and more importantly, I feel grounded and in control.
When I tell friends my new figure is down to AI and not Ozempic, they are fascinated.
Meanwhile, at home, I choose my words carefully. Ours is a body-positive household, and my daughter, now 13, sees this as a glow-up, not a shrinking.
Lose Weight With The Help Of AI by Julie Creffield