Health problems made Eadaoin Curran gain weight and lose self-esteem but she has overcome that now, writes ELAINE KEOGH
‘I AM A determined person but I have no willpower,” says Eadaoin Curran (24) who, regardless, has succeeded in shedding nearly 38kg (six stone) in just over a year.
As she left the pounds behind her she also said goodbye to antidepressants and panic attacks, which had combined to leave her too fearful to socialise and feeling unable to return to third level.
Curran now weighs 73.5kg (11 stone 8lbs) – down from 108kg (17 stone 6lbs) in just 54 weeks.
She quips: “I used to think that chocolate would make me happy! Now I eat all day long, but it is the right food. I used to go without a breakfast or lunch and then would eat a heap of junk in the evening. Now I cook and don’t count calories.”
For her the key to not just losing weight but regaining control of her life was the “psychological support” she got every week at weight loss organisation, Slimming World.
She went to her local group in Dundalk, Co Louth, and said the focus was always on what had been achieved that week or what you could achieve the following week.
“There was no guilt or fearing the weigh-in; I put on weight seven or eight times since I joined, but each time I lost it. I used to think it was just a diet but then I realised it was changing the way I eat. It’s food optimising, not a diet.”
There is a major shift away from processed food to home-cooked healthy food. “All foods are in their natural state including potatoes. People can’t believe you can have as many potatoes as you want.”
There are long lists of free foods, mainly fruit and vegetables, which have few calories but are filling, as well as what are called “syns”, which are high in calories but low in nutritional value.
Part of each class covers what is known as “image therapy” – it is not about what shade of lipstick to wear or what body shape you are but stands for individual motivation and group experience. It was this aspect of the weekly meetings that Eadaoin says made the difference for her.
She put on weight in 2008 and 2009 when she had two operations for a pilonidal cyst on her back which had begun as an ingrowing hair.
The first operation was just before she left for Strathclyde University to study for two years for an engineering degree. She had life plans that included Strathclyde and didn’t take well to her doctors telling her not to go straight after the first operation.
“But, of course, I did go. The wound wouldn’t heal and I missed classes every day.” Depression began to get a grip and she ate more.
By the end of the year, she was on antidepressants, needed a second operation, and was again advised by her doctor not to return to Scotland.
“I went back. My GP said not to go because I wasn’t mentally in a fit state to go back.
“I was living with five girls but they would go out and I would stay in because, obviously, I was piling on the weight then. I was eating peanuts and chocolate all the time.”
By February 2009, she was finding it too much and returned to Dundalk very unhappy. “That wasn’t my life. For my life I had this plan and it wasn’t it.”
She feels the antidepressants “were masking things rather than sorting out problems. I always felt there was a big stigma attached to them and that pushed me even further down and I absolutely piled on weight.”
It was when her mum joined a weight-loss group in February 2010 that things changed. “I genuinely didn’t think it would work because she was eating so much ‘real food’, not rabbit food!”
The panic attacks were a daily event when she was in Scotland but two months after joining they had gone.
Shortly after, she was off the anti-depressants and she has resumed her degree at Dundalk Institute of Technology in engineering and entrepreneurship, which will see her launch a new business in the coming months.
Last month she won the Woman of the Year contest for Slimming World in Ireland.
This month she will travel to the UK to represent Ireland and compete against entrants from Northern Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales.With her fiancé, Padraig McGuinness, she is planning a wedding in 2013.
