LOOKING at a photo of herself at work, Sinead Hatter thought the person starring back at her was a stranger.
After losing her mum to cancer, the 35-year-old’s weight had spiralled, when consumed by grief she turned to food for comfort.
The sales director from Buckinghamshire can still barely believe the woman in that photograph, above, is her, taken at a work event in 2021.
“That picture was the final straw in a series of small wake-up calls,” says Sinead.
“I found my clothes weren’t fitting, I was avoiding photos and I felt exhausted just walking up stairs.
“When I looked at that picture and didn’t recognise myself, it hit hard, and it soon transpired that losing my mum had played a role in this.”
Losing her mum to cancer in October 2019 had left Sinead bereft and understandably uninterested in diet and exercise.
Food had always been at the heart of Sinead’s family.
“Every celebration or stressful day was centred around eating,” she says, adding that portion sizes and nutrition were never on her radar.
But when her mum died, Sinead’s comfort eating became her coping mechanism.
She says: “It wasn’t about hunger. It was about comfort and routine.
“I didn’t feel good about myself. I felt stuck in a cycle.
“It wasn’t just physical discomfort, it was emotional too, frustration, and self-doubt. I was very defeated.”
The larger she got, the less Sinead felt like hitting the gym, but she knew she needed a better solution than the diets she had tried before.
“I tried pretty much every diet you can think of – Slimming World, Atkins, the soup diet, the military diet, and Weight Watchers.
“Some worked short term, but none of them felt sustainable for the long run.
Mindset is everything. If you don’t work on that first, it’s really hard to make lasting changes.
Sinead Hatter
“That was the point where I decided to take a more structured and mindful approach, tracking what I ate, learning about calories, and understanding how my body works.”
So in September 2021, she started using the app MyFitnessPal, in which you can log your food and count calories and learn about the nutrition of food.
At the time, Sinead was 13st 13lbs. She set a goal to lose three stone by March, 2022.
Slowly she introduced healthier habits – she increased her water intake and added daily walks, and as the weight began to shift, she added strength training and group exercise classes.
“Joining legs, bums and tums classes was daunting at first but the camaraderie kept me coming back,” she says.
Soon, spin and body combat classes became part of her routine five times a week, while maintaining a regular step count of 10,000 a day.
“I focused on consistency not perfection,” she says.
Over 18 months, Sinead lost 6st (going from 13st 13lb to 8st 13lbs), and she has maintained it ever since.
BE WARY OF QUICK FIXES
Sinead said: “I gained energy, confidence and mental clarity. My friends and family saw not just the physical change but how much happier I became.”
Though Sinead had to get used to calorie counting – and admits she felt “a bit hungry at first” – she wouldn’t have done it any other way.
She says: “As I started training more consistently, I was able to increase my calories a bit, which gave me more flexibility with food and made things feel much more manageable.
“Tracking helps build awareness, and awareness gives you control.”
Sharing advice for others, Sinead says ‘do your research’ when it comes to weight loss jabs like Mounjaro and Wegovy.
How to work out calories to lose weight and use MyFitnessPal
To work out how many calories you need to eat to lose weight, you need to figure out your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). This is how many calories your body burns just by existing, based on your weight, age, gender and more.
To lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than your BMR. A safe and sustainable goal is to create a deficit of 500 calories per day.
There is an equation to work out your BMR, but it is easier to use a calculator, such as that at www.calculator.net/bmr-calculator.
All you have to do is pop in your age, weight, height and gender. It will give your BMR, and then add some more based on your activity levels.
How to use MyFitnessPal
MyFitnessPal (MFP) is a popular tool for logging food and monitoring your calorie intake against your goal. It can also help you to learn about food nutrition more broadly.
When you sign up for MFP, it will ask for your weight, goal weight, and activity level. It automatically calculates your goal calorie intake, but you can adjust this with the calculation you made above.
- Log your food in the diary section – breakfast, lunch and dinner. This requires you to weight your food (usually in its raw state).
- Use the search bar to find food items in the database or use the barcode scanner to quickly log packaged foods.
- Adjust the serving size of your food – e.g. 100g of rice – for the most accurate entry.
- Foods and their nutritional content are added in by the public. So always verify that it’s the same as what you are reading on the label of your food – if not, you can adjust it.
- You can also create meals for repeat entries, making it quicker, and ‘copy and paste’ meals from previous dates.
- Review your food diary each day by scrolling to the bottom of the page and selecting ‘Nutrition’. This helps to see your calories over the day, week or month and where you might be going wrong.
- Get used to the app over time: If you’ve not used it before, you might be shocked to see that your usual seving of cheddar cheese is so high in calories. Don’t panic if you go over your calories for the day while you learn more about calories in foods.
- The more you use it, the easier it gets – you will become more efficient in estimating calories in foods and meals, until you can rely on the app less.
“They might help some people, but they also come with risks,” she says.
“Make sure you understand the full picture before making a decision, and always do what’s best for you.
“For me personally, it’s not a route I’d take. You can get into a calorie deficit without any shortcuts just by eating well, tracking your intake, and training consistently.
If you think it seems too hard to lose weight, it’s not. Just decide you are going to change and then take the first step.
Sinead Hatter
“Above all, mindset is everything. If you don’t work on that first, it’s really hard to make lasting changes.
“Weight loss alone will not fix your self-esteem, you have to work on your mindset too.
“I truly believe long-term, sustainable habits will always get you further than quick fixes.”
LONG-TERM RESULTS
This year, Sinead ran her fifth half-marathon, raising £1,000 for the hospice that supported her mum, a milestone she says would have been unimaginable before her journey began.
She also studied nutrition and mental health to help educate others on a similar journey.
Her partner, James Forchione, has opened his own gym, activfitgyms in Milton Keynes, and Sinead’s journey played a part in bringing it to life.
Even though she is now happy with her weight, she still uses MyFitnessPal religiously, but is more focused on macros (protein, carbs and fats – the make-up of food).
Sinead says: “I am now more focused on sculpting and defining my body, and I like to track the progress I make each week.
“It is not just about how I look, but proving I can stick with something and create lasting change.
“If you think it seems too hard to lose weight, it’s not. Just decide you are going to change and then take the first step.”
Sinead had turned to food as a comfort after her mum’s death in 2019[/caption]
Sinead has now studied nutrition and mental health to help educate others on a weight loss journey[/caption]
