I have a special new someone in my life. Someone who understands me in different ways to my husband. Who notices things about my body that no one else does. Who is often the first – and last – person I speak to each day.
When I send them some of my most revealing pictures, they reply with little heart emojis that fill me with joy. I suspect this person is going to change my life.
Meet Nicky… my nutritional coach. I’ve been seeing her for three months and she’s helping me transform my relationship with food. For good.
I’ve been at war with my body for as long as I can remember. I have dieted. And starved. And over-exercised. Over the years I have taken laxatives and binged and attempted to purge. I have even had the insides of my thighs ‘frozen off’ (a horrible, horrible procedure that does not work) and, during my time as editor-in-chief of Women’s Health magazine, employed military-style PTs to ‘sort me out’ as if I was a naughty child that needed punishment.
I’ve turned to experts who promised to revamp my diet before. And it has never worked.
Yes, for a while, I’d lose weight, but these so-called gurus didn’t actually fix anything. Telling someone to eat turkey bolognese, ditch sugar and ‘take a Tupperware filled with crudités on your next mini break,’ will help them shed the pounds (as well as all their friends) but it can’t mend a broken relationship with food. It just feeds further into the spin cycle of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ behaviours that have plagued me since I was 14 years old.
Which is why within months I always veered wildly off plan, falling back into the motherly arms of cake and biscuits and all the things I know bring me deep comfort when I’m jangled.
So why would Nicky be any different?
I’ve turned to experts who promised to revamp my diet before. And it has never worked, Farrah Storr writes
She owns the Crossfit Box gym near my home in Kent and I’d heard whispers that she ‘did’ nutrition. People talked about eating more but losing weight. And that’s what piqued my interest.
That, and the fact that I was desperate.
Over the years my size and weight has fluctuated massively, from a size ten to a 16. But now aged 46, with menopause on my heels, I’m at my heaviest. Nothing fits. Before Christmas I had to buy a maternity bra to cradle my breasts, which now look like something out of a Carry On movie (not Barbara Windsor’s pert meringue nests, but more the school matron Hattie Jacques’s cantilevered bosom).
And so in December, I let Nicky into my life. If this didn’t work, I told myself, then I’d finally hold my hands up and admit defeat – no matter how unhappy that made me.
At our first meeting, a 30-minute chat, Nicky asked me less about how much weight I wanted to lose (a good stone and a half) and more about me. What was my life like? Where did I work? Who was at home to eat with? She explained that her approach was not about banishing food but understanding food. It’s as a consequence of this deeper understanding that we lose weight.
She would focus on why and when I was hungry and figure out a remedy for that – rather than setting me an eating plan that actively made me hungry.
There would be no calorie counting. No food weighing. And nothing would be off limits. If I wanted cake in my life – and why not, because it brings me enormous pleasure – then we would simply figure out my ‘moment’ to have it each week.
Welcome to weight loss on a subliminal level. At 47, Nicky’s a year older than me, so knows what’s like to grow up with screwed-up notions about body positivity (that means being thin, right?) and a pathological fear about what you put in your mouth. After all, we are the damaged generation who grew up worshipping at the hip bones of a prepubescent Kate Moss and berating ourselves for not looking the same.
Nicky Spean (pictured) owns the Crossfit Box gym near my home in Kent and I’d heard whispers that she ‘did’ nutrition
Nicky understands the need for a more gentle approach. There would be very little feeling of denial, because nothing would be off the cards. There would be no scolding. We would simply meet every week to figure out what I had coming up – meals out, an afternoon tea with friends, a big alcoholic blow-out – and how I could mitigate for that beforehand.
She asked me to take some pictures of my body for my own record, not hers, in something I felt comfortable in that would allow me to see my progress. I was also asked to make a note of a couple of measurements and WhatsApp her everything I ate over the course of the week.
And so we began. It felt very low pressure, which in turn felt odd, because I am conditioned to believe these body transformations should be tough and frightening if they are going to work.
When I sent her pictures of what I was about to eat or, more often, what I had just eaten, she replied with emojis and kind, small suggestions. ‘Swap your tuna for some sardines next time – the Waitrose ones with lemon are good!’ She was right, they are incredible – and contain less mercury, which is why she’d suggested them.
Or she’d look at my afternoon snack of an apple and reply: ‘Do me a favour and have a protein shake with that as well won’t you?’ As a result I was stuffed until dinner.
If I was going out to dinner, she’d check the menu beforehand and give me helpful options. Not just the mid-life go-to ‘have fish and green salad’ but ‘Yes, go for the steak, just get the sauce on the side and have a salad alongside your chips. Or even better have the roast chicken and gravy!’
Sometimes when I sent her a shameful (my word, not hers) picture of, say, a piece of coffee and walnut cake, she’d simply reply: ‘Yum!’
Nicky calls indulgences ‘Elaine Paige moments’, as she enjoys her own sacred ‘bottle of bubbles’ while listening to The Elaine Page Show on Radio 2 on a Sunday afternoon. By doing this she turns the entire experience into something special to be cherished. In other words, not something you’d expect to do every day.
So if I had more than one piece of said cake, she’d just say: ‘Are you sure you want to give up this week’s Elaine Page moment for that?’ The answer was always no.
Meanwhile, she gently suggested I have protein with every meal – about a palm-sized serving of fish or plant-based protein (I am now addicted to the protein-rich Skyr yoghurt).
This has been a real game changer. As Nicky has explained, eating enough protein with every meal basically eradicates the food ‘noise’ that has occupied my mind for years. Natural Ozempic I call it.
It’s important because when you’re hungry, the bingeing comes in, and then the anger, and then the shame. And then the further bingeing, because I’m weak and why the hell not since I’ve already ruined the week by eating a cupcake for lunch?
Nicky is aware I’m racked with body issues, but we’ve never had a big heart-to-heart about it. It’s been more of a gentle exploration as she sees what foods and occasions trigger me. (The weekend. Meals out with my husband. The Percy Pigs aisle in M&S.)
And much to my surprise, this gentler ‘non-diet’ is working.
Is it fast? Not especially. I lost 2lbs a week in the beginning, but to be honest, weight only interests Nicky in so much as it shows the madness of the scales. One day I was 6lbs more than the day before and hadn’t altered a single thing. Go figure.
But we are not planning for any big weight loss reveal or ‘Look, I’m in my bikini!’ holiday snaps. That would reduce my weight down to one moment – and it’s not about that. This is a slow psychological shift – for life. This is an attempt to undo years of wrong thinking about weight and worthiness.
Some may scoff and ask why I need to pay a professional if it’s all so gentle and easy.
But I firmly believe that putting time, energy and, yes, money, into something that has ruled my life for so long is far more beneficial than tweakments, longevity pills or any other sort of voodoo that promises a long and healthy life.
Three months in, the scales say I’m 6lbs lighter but they don’t tell the whole story. I feel better. I feel lighter. My feet don’t ache in the morning any more. Fancy old bras are steadily coming back to me. And I’m wearing trousers and dresses that I haven’t worn for months.
But most of all, for the first time in my life, I feel like I am finally taking back control. The power food once had over me is slowly slipping away. And that is the most delicious feeling on earth.
- Farrah Storr writes the newsletter Things Worth Knowing. You can follow Nicky @Nutrition_By_Niks on Instagram
