The Power Couple: Marion and Robbie lose six stone with Slimming World
By Aideen O'Flaherty
A husband and wife team who lost almost six stone since May, after deciding to pursue a healthier lifestyle together and signing up to Slimming World classes on Zoom, have seen their health improve and their waistbands shrink in recent months.
Marion (55) and Robbie (54) Power from Lucan signed up for Slimming World when they weighed 15 stone and 17 stone respectively.
Marion and Robbie look and feel great since joining
They were unhappy with their weight and they had growing health concerns.
For Robbie, the tipping point came when he went to his GP last spring and had blood tests, which showed that his cholesterol was high and that he had the potential to develop fatty liver and diabetes.
His doctor advised him to lose weight.
He told The Echo: “It was very clear that I had to do something about it, so in May I joined Slimming World and I lost the weight really quickly.
“Three or four weeks after my doctor called me, telling me there was a list of medication for me to try, but I told her about joining Slimming World and that I’d already lost a stone that month.
“So I got a blood test again, and this time, all of the results were normal. It wasn’t necessarily about weight loss, it was about lifestyle changes.”
Marion and Robbie in 2019 before joining slimming wolrd
Marion, who had previously tried to lose weight through slimming groups but hadn’t been successful, decided to give it another try to support her husband, and also because she found that her weight was exacerbating her rheumatoid arthritis.
She explained: “I joined because I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, and because I’m a healthcare worker I’m on my feet for 12 hours a day, and the weight was putting pressure on my joints.
“It was quite painful.”
The Powers signed up to the Slimming World classes run by consultant Trevor Kearns, which are ordinarily at The Cannon Despard Centre in Lucan but have been mainly online since the pandemic began.
“Doing the Zoom classes is no problem at all,” said Robbie. “You can see everybody on the screen when you’re talking so it seems more collaborative.
“As a man, I had a prejudiced assumption that Slimming World wasn’t for men, but sometimes there’s more men on the Zoom call than women.”
The couple easily took to Slimming World meals and never went hungry. While they had to tweak the recipes of some of their favourite meals, they never went without and could see the difference it was making to their health.
“It’s about preparing food in a different way, it’s not limiting your food or dieting,” said Robbie.
“I don’t want to sound conceited – but it was the easiest thing I’ve ever done.
“There’s a lot of effort involved in things like meal preparation, but it’s not difficult in itself.”
He added: “It took quite a while for me to see and notice the weight loss, because it’s incremental.
“I saw it in my clothing, because I recently cleaned out my wardrobe and tried on one of my shirts, and realised I could fit two of me in it!
“And I did notice a dramatic improvement in my energy levels, and I was getting much better sleep.”
When Robbie joined Slimming World in May, he weighed 17 stone, and has since lost 3st 3lbs, and is on-track to achieving his weight loss goal of 3-and-a-half stone.
Marion has also felt the benefits of Slimming World, having weighed 15st 5lbs when she joined, and she’s now 12st 11lbs – just 11lbs away from her target weight.
Marion said: “We’ve had this conversation about what will happen long-term, and it isn’t just ‘you have to stick to Slimming World’.
“You can eat what you want on it, so we don’t see it as ‘we’ll get to our target weight and that’s it’, we see it as a total lifestyle change – and we’re not even craving the food, like chocolate and biscuits, that we used to eat.”
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