When Dawn Gunn lost 11-and-a-half stone — more than half her bodyweight — she promised herself she wouldn’t put it back on.
“I’d worked so hard trying to get the weight off,” she explains.
Then life got in the way. After having her second child, Dawn was four stones above her goal weight.
It wasn’t a total relapse. She hadn’t returned to the 22-stone she’d weighed at the age of 18, before embarking on her incredible weight-loss journey.
But for Dawn, a straight-talking, determined mum from Thurso, that wasn’t the point. She was determined to keep that promise to herself, so got back to work cutting calories.
But something was different this time.
“For love nor money, I could not lose weight,” she says. What worked last time wasn’t working this time.
“I was at my wit’s end.”
Why is it so hard to keep weight off?
It is a damning statistic, but between 80-85% of people who lose a large amount of weight regain it.
Dawn knows this better than most — her sister and mum lost weight at the same time she did but have since put it back on.
So, when she completed her incredible weight loss, she knew she’d have to fight to maintain it.
She did this by sticking to the same rules that had shed the pounds in the first place.
She ditched what she calls her “rotten” food choices of crisps and chocolate, and her tendency to eat throughout the day.
“I’m not a person who has big, massive portions of food,” she says. “I tended to graze on food, but obviously it wasn’t lettuce I was grazing on.”
Going from ‘single Pringle’ to happily married
It took Dawn six years to lose the 11-and-a-half stone, starting when she was 18 and ending when she was 24.
In that time, she moved from her native Orkney to Thurso.
Other momentous life moments occurred. She was also no longer a “single Pringle”, as she puts it — she met Tony halfway through her weight-loss journey and married him in 2018.
Hitting her target was “awesome,” she says. And, because she stuck to her rules, the weight stayed off.
She put on a stone with her first child — her daughter — but lost that relatively comfortably. By then, her diet was no longer a diet; it was just how she lived.
It was when she had her son five years later that the trouble started.
“I don’t know if it was because of my age, that I gotten older,” she says of the time.
She admits she wasn’t adhering to her diet 100% as she was looking after two children and trying to live her life.
But whatever the reason, the outcome was clear.
“I just couldn’t get it off,” she says.
The diet and exercise guru that transformed Dawn’s weight loss
This is when Katy Sutherland came in.
Katy is a consultant for The 1:1 Diet, the personalised nutrition plan previously known as the Cambridge Diet.
The 33-year-old from Dingwall has her own weight-loss story. She dropped three stone in three months on the 1:1 Diet after the death of her mum led to comfort eating.
She now helps other people reach their weight-loss goals, either in person or via WhatsApp and Zoom, which is how Dawn found her when last November she did an online search for support.
Katy’s involvement turned things around almost immediately.
“She was a bit lost,” explains Katy, who saw it as her job to make Dawn remember she could be the priority.
“Obviously, when you have a baby, at the beginning you can’t make yourself that priority. But eventually the time comes where you deserve to be happy as well.”
How Dawn combined diet and exercise to start shedding pounds
Katy wasn’t just someone that Dawn could speak to every day to keep her motivation up. She also changed up the Thurso mum’s habits, encouraging her for the first time in years to go to the gym.
Dawn was a keen netball player when she was younger but a nasty knee injury (a ruptured ACL) had kept her away from exercise ever since.
With Katy’s support, Dawn started running on her local gym’s treadmill (which was better for her knee).
She also started weight training, something that has transformed her life.
“I’m delighted,” she says. “I never was a weakling but when I lost my weight before, I wasn’t focusing so much on strength training, and you could tell. There was a lot of skin and bone involved.
“But now like I can tell I do feel better with myself. I feel stronger. I feel healthier.”
Dawn calls it the “right way” to lose weight. Her diet isn’t low calorie — she needs the fuel to power her three-times-a-week gym workout and build muscle mass.
But it is balanced to keep her feeling full, and in enough of a calorie deficit to shift her excess pounds (see below for what Dawn typically eats in a day).
Meanwhile, she’s developed actual biceps, which she puts to good use at home.
“I gave my husband a horsey-back the other night,” she laughs. “I felt quite good about that.”
Dawn targets new goals that are not only about weight loss
Dawn still has two stone to lose to reach her target but is confident she’ll manage it — with Katy’s help, of course.
Plus, thanks to her exercise regime, she’s discovered new goals that are not just centered around a number on a scale.
Things like getting her 5km treadmill time down to below 28 minutes, or spending quality time at the gym, away from family life.
“It’s something for me,” she says. “It’s not about my kids, it’s my time.”
And she knows that even after shedding the final two stone she will have to continue eating sensibly and exercising for the rest of her life.
People, she says, sometimes forget that.
“That’s not how life works. I’m afraid,” Dawn continues. “There’s no point in doing all the hard work to lose the weight just to put it all back on again.”
Dawn’s daily eating and exercise regime
I normally have two [1:1 Diet] products a day [says Dawn]. The shake comes pre-made – that’s actually really tasty — and then I would have a meal bar, which is like an Oreo bar that’s chewy and full of vitamins and minerals.
And then I also have a sneaky packet of baked crisps as well — baked not fried — and then usually a snack around three o’clock with a cup of tea.
It’s a a normal tea at night so I had a lasagna the other night with lettuce and tomatoes or you could have chicken in a sauce with rice. I don’t cut back on carb — I don’t count all that. As long as I’ve got enough protein and enough carbs to keep it going, that’s the main thing.
I love eggs so I often have eggs and toast or poached eggs and toast.
I train first thing in the morning so I get up for a session that starts at 6:15am. It’s in Thurso so it’s a 15-minute drive for me.
I don’t know if I’d call myself a gym addict, but if I don’t get my three sessions in a week then there’s something niggling at the back of my head.
Dawn is documenting her weight loss journey on Instagram, here. Contact Katy Sutherland at The 1:1 Diet here or on her Instagram here.
