Dee Hunter loves martial arts and has spent years teaching people how to get fit with the exercise.
But at a UK size 24, she couldn’t do some of the moves herself and when she quickly got breathless in class she felt like a hypocrite.
Her diet consisted of sugary drinks and takeaways almost every night, as the 36-year-old had got into the habit of using food for comfort after a difficult childhood.
A year and a half ago, she decided enough was enough. She wanted to eat a healthier diet and actually practice the martial arts she was teaching.
Now a size 16-18 and getting smaller, Dee, from Newcastle, wants to use what she’s learned to show people how to diet in a healthy way if they want to lose weight.
She tells Metro.co.uk: ‘I felt I couldn’t be a role model to the people I was teaching martial arts to when I was size 24.
‘I looked in the mirror one day and realised I was just getting bigger and bigger.
‘I just started eating a proper diet and actually doing some exercise. It was about changing my mindset and my lifestyle.
‘Slowly, the weight started to come off and now, a year and a half on, I have dropped almost four dress sizes.’
Dee started putting on weight when her family moved from the countryside to the city, and she says they faced abuse from neighbours for being different.
She explains: ‘I was seven years old and people threatened us with knives. We had bricks thrown through the window and fireworks put through our letterbox.
‘My family was victimised because we weren’t like everyone else as we had lived a quite isolated rural life.
‘With that, we were also bullied at school and even when I went to a new school, I was bullied there too. Everything really knocked my self-confidence.’
By the time she was a teenager, Dee was a size 10-12 but she started to gain weight because of the problems she had faced when she was younger.
She explains: ‘I was depressed after everything. Things were better because we finally moved and I started to learn martial arts and stick up for myself but I just had no self-esteem.
‘I didn’t want to eat in front of people so I would wait until I was at home, behind closed doors and just raid the cupboards in secret. I would just eat and eat when I was by myself and no one could see.
‘I went up to a size 14-16 and then it just kept going up.’
At 18, Dee started drinking and going out with friends and with more calories coming from alcohol as well as her diet, she gained more weight.
She went to Northumbria University after finishing school and started partying even more, leading to her size gradually increasing.
During her time at university, Dee says she was sexually assaulted and later raped, although her attackers were never convicted.
The incidents caused her depression to return and she started to suffer from panic attacks, turning to food again for comfort.
Recognising Dee was spiralling deeper into depression, her brother Darren, who set up Solo Studios, tried to help by helping her learn more martial arts.
Dee went on to earn her black belts and her self-confidence improved, eventually working at Solo Studios as a child development coach.
But Dee says that her lifestyle hadn’t changed and she was still putting on weight because of what she was eating.
She explains: ‘I was stuck in the same habits I had been following for years.
Dee's diet before and after
Before
Breakfast: Dee would skip food for breakfast but would sometimes have a tea or coffee (with full-fat milk and four spoonfuls of sugar in a coffee or two in a tea)
Lunch: A pub meal like burger and chips, or a sandwich with cake, crisps, Red Bull, or sometimes chips or Greggs.
Dinner: Takeaway if finishing work late or a microwave meal
Snacks: Lots of cans of pop, energy drinks large, tea, coffee, chocolate bars, crisps, sausage rolls, doughnuts
Now:
Breakfast: Dee now always has something for breakfast. Usually, she has cereal or oats with almond milk and no sugar, with a cup of tea (made with low-fat milk and no sugar)
Lunch: A typical lunch is a tuna and cucumber sandwich with water
Dinner: Something like salad, pasta, soup, with water. Dee never eats after 8 pm and avoids tea at night.
Snacks: Lots of fruit including bananas, melon and carrots. Sometimes she has protein bars and cereal bars.
‘I help other people improve their fitness but it was time to look after myself.
‘I couldn’t jump and couldn’t move the way I had before. I was becoming breathless in class just showing the moves.’
Finishing work late because of night time classes, Dee would eat food that was quick and easy.
She explains: ‘I was eating takeaways nearly every night – pizza, chips, pasties, McDonald’s.
‘I would finish late and couldn’t be bothered to cook. If it wasn’t a takeaway, it would be a microwave meal. There was never anything nutritious.’
Throughout the day, Dee would drink cans of Red Bull and tea or coffee with three sugars, as well as snacking on chocolate bars.
One day in 2018, Dee decided her diet needed to change.
She cut down the spoonfuls of sugar in her tea one by one and started replacing some of the fizzy drinks with water. She tried eating fruit if she wanted to snack rather than chocolate.
She also increased the amount of exercise she was doing, as although she was teaching classes every day, she wasn’t moving much.
‘Teaching is actually low intensity,’ Dee tells us. ‘It’s the students who do the exercise.
‘So I started doing my own sessions twice a week. I would do a kickboxing workout as well as physical development exercises to build stronger muscles.’
Dee's top tips for introducing a healthier diet
- When I go to the shop, I write a list and I stick to it. I won’t buy anything that isn’t on the list because it stops me buying unhealthy snacks.
- Sometimes, like when I’m watching a movie, for example, I do crave something sweet but I satisfy it with fruit like melon. I can chop it up into pieces and snack on it like I would popcorn to help reduce those cravings.
- I made simple swaps that I didn’t really notice like switching my full-fat milk for semi-skimmed and then I switched it for almond milk.
- I still have a treat day at the weekend where I can have something I have been craving, like some pizza. Once I’ve had it, I just tell myself that’s it and I go back to my normal healthier routine.
Dee doesn’t weigh herself so doesn’t know how much she has actually lost, instead relying on how she feels and how her clothes fit to measure progress.
She adds: ‘I don’t use the scales because it can be so offputting. One day you might be carrying more water and it says you have put on weight and that can throw it all off. You end up putting yourself down and giving up.
‘I just measure it with my clothes and you start to feel good about things getting looser.’
Dee hopes to continue her diet plan and feels like now she has a whole new way of life, she will be able to reach her goal of a size 12-14.
She’s also working with her clients at the studios to help them understand how to combine diet and martial arts to lead a healthier lifestyle.
‘It doesn’t happen overnight,’ she says. ‘I’ve done it slowly over a year and a half but I feel like my whole mindset is completely different now and this is for the long term.
‘It’s changed my life. I feel so much better now and I have so much more energy. I’m able to get up so much easier in the morning.
‘Now I do feel like a role model because I’m starting to look like what I should look like.’
And Dee has lots of advice for people who want to lose weight healthily and sustainably.
She says: ‘You need to break habits by creating new ones, like training twice a week. Physical exercise is not only good for weight loss but it helps you feel better too.
‘Find an exercise you enjoy – it doesn’t have to be martial arts. For me, martial arts was fantastic because you are also learning self-defence and building confidence.
‘Start by changing little things and build it up. Replace some of your coffees with water or snacks with healthier things like protein bars or apples.
‘If you’re adding things like sugar to your coffee, again just cut down gradually.
‘It does take effort to change those habits but once you crack them, you stick to it and see a difference.’
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source https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/05/martial-arts-teacher-drops-four-dress-sizes-big-moves-11007223/
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