With a growing list of pressures – three children to look after, her own health problems, and then her husband’s cancer scare – Gillian Thomas found her weight creeping up.
Tipping the scales at 18 stone, she hated seeing herself in the mirror and deliberately avoided family photos.
‘I just didn’t recognise myself,’ she said. ‘I’d become a blob.’
Suffering from a painful joint condition that affected her mobility and left her increasingly reliant on a wheelchair, she was caught in a vicious circle: the more weight she gained, the harder it became to move around, which in turn pushed her weight up even more.
Laid low by fatigue, she struggled to find the energy to prepare nutritious home-cooked food.
And when her husband was diagnosed with a brain tumour, the additional burden of caring for him plus attending countless medical appointments made it yet more difficult to find the time for proper cooking.
Instead, the easy option became the dinner-time norm: convenience meals, frozen pies, sausages, burgers and oven chips.
Gillian said: ‘I wasn’t feeling good about myself. I’d always been quite slim when I was younger – but I’d let things slip over time.
Weighing 18 stone, Gillian hated seeing herself in the mirror and deliberately avoided family photos
‘My weight had increased after having children, then my husband become poorly. He was in and out of hospital then off work for a long time. It was a case of eating whatever was in the freezer as I didn’t have the time or energy for cooking anything else.’
However, the 53-year-old has now transformed her life – thanks to a dramatic weight loss.
Eight stone lighter, she no longer depends on her wheelchair or needs a crutch to get around the house.
With a massive boost in self-confidence, she’s returned to work. And she can even wear size 10 clothes for the first time in 20 years.
It might sound like one of the success stories of the much-hyped weight-loss injections which have transformed obesity treatment in recent years.
But Gillian has revealed that her remarkable turnaround owes nothing to Wegovy or Mounjaro, but instead to a more old-fashioned approach: a calorie-restricted diet.
Four years ago, she signed up to the Jane Plan – a retro dieting system which fans say is life-changing, easy, better than fat jabs, and shifts weight fast.
The idea is that, once a month, pre-prepared meals are delivered to your doorstep, providing around 1,200 calories a day for women, or 1,400 a day for men.
Gillian said: ‘I wasn’t feeling good about myself. I’d always been quite slim when I was younger – but I’d let things slip over time’
Dozen of options are available, but a typical menu might include pecan and maple granola for breakfast (179 calories), spicy Thai noodles for lunch (204 calories) and beef lasagne for dinner (401 calories).
A daily snack is included – for example, chocolate-dipped shortbread (81 calories) – while customers are also encouraged to bulk out their meals with fresh fruit and veg.
By sticking to the plan, the aim is to shed a couple of pounds a week – a similar result to using weight-loss injections.
The cost varies between £259 to £409 a month, depending on how long you sign up for.
Set up in 2010 by Jane Michell, a former director of nutrition at a London hospital, the company says it has so far helped around 100,000 people lose weight.
Among them is Gillian, who lives near Watford, in Hertfordshire, with her engineer husband Renny and their three children aged between 15 and 20.
Having lost her left arm in a train accident as a young woman, she also suffers from Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, an agonising genetic condition that leaves her with loose joints and arthritis.
She said: ‘When I was at my heaviest, doctors warned me I was morbidly obese. I needed to use a crutch to get around indoors and needed to take a wheelchair or mobility scooter when I left the house so that I could sit down.
After starting the Jane Plan, Gillian dropped from 18 stone to 11 stone in less than a year and has now dropped further – to just under ten stone
‘My son, rather bluntly, said he was embarrassed and didn’t want to be seen with me in a wheelchair because people would just assume I was using it because I was fat. I saw the Jane Plan advertised on the TV and thought: I need to do this!’
After starting the Plan, she dropped from 18 stone to 11 stone in less than a year and has now dropped further – to just under ten stone.
With her husband’s brain tumour successfully treated, she has also started work as a teaching assistant in a local primary school.
She said: ‘The Jane Plan has been a game-changer. It’s given me a burst of energy and motivation, as well as boosting my confidence. I can now climb the stairs with ease and my overall health has improved. I can even squeeze back into clothes I last wore 20 years ago!’
Nutritional therapist Amanda Serif, a member of the British Association of Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine, confirmed that the Jane Plan can be an effective tool for losing weight.
She said: ‘There is really good evidence that calorie-controlled meal delivery systems can bring short-term weight loss. More people tend to lose weight on a structured programme like the Jane Plan than when they simply try to do it by themselves.
‘It takes the decision-making out of what to eat by providing the right food with the right amount of calories. It also enforces portion control – which is something that many people really struggle with.’
However Ms Serif warned that people using the plan were at risk of putting weight back on again if they stopped buying the meals – unless they also made changes to their diets and lifestyles.
Gillian now says: ‘The Jane Plan has been a game-changer. It’s given me a burst of energy and motivation, as well as boosting my confidence’
She said: ‘Unless you stay on the plan indefinitely, the only way to avoid regaining weight is to use it as a stepping stone to longer-term behaviour change.
‘You need to learn how big a portion of food should be, what the healthier choices are, and what foods will make you feel fuller and sustain you for longer.’
Gillian was initially shocked at the portion sizes of the meals supplied on the plan.
She said: ‘Over the past decades, we’ve got used to bigger and bigger portions. At first, I thought the Jane Plan meals looked tiny. But the surprise was that I never went hungry; there was no need for a sneaky doughnut or piece of cake.’
Gillian continues to buy the Jane Plan meals on a monthly basis. And although she acknowledges the cost involved, she believes it has proved good value for money.
She said: ‘You save money on the weekly shop. And you’re not just buying the diet plan – you’re also buying the fact you’re going to lose weight… And in order to lose weight you don’t order takeaways, which can mean a big saving.
She added: ‘It’s been amazing. I can’t tell put into words how much it’s changed the way I’m living, how much more I can move around, how much more I can do – how much better I feel about myself.’
