Health and Beauty: The light way to lose weight

By Diane Crabtree

Women's Editor
It's a case of waist not want not for Kingsley Lambert. The 46-year-old yo-yo dieter has gone from one extreme to another on the trouser front...

WHENEVER Kingsley Lambert has had a problem in his life he would use food to get by.

When his older brother Kim died in a road accident at the age of 17, Kingsley dropped out of school and his weight ballooned.

Years later when he discovered his mum Sheila had cancer at the age of 51, he went on a starvation diet and lived off coffee, diet coke and cigarettes, almost becoming anorexic.

Throughout his 20s and 30s Kingsley, who works at the Halifax Bank, continued to have no control over his eating habits and went from bingeing to dieting at an alarming rate.

"It seemed that every time there was a major milestone in my life such as the birth of my son or the death of a loved one, I lost my dad in 2002 , it had the effect of driving me further into comfort eating and drinking with obvious consequences," says Kingsley who lives in Mytholmroyd, with his wife Niki and their nine-year-old son, Karl.

His yo-yo dieting didn't just affect his weight, it affected his whole life. When he was obese he lost his confidence at work and at one point got demoted.

His relationship with Niki suffered because every time he lost weight and put it back on he felt he had let her down. But what really worried him was Karl getting ribbed at school for having a fat dad.

His son turned out to be his turning point, giving him a driver to lose weight and keep it off, which wasn't purely about Kingsley himself.

At the end of last year he was told about a weight loss programme called LighterLife by a male work colleague who had tried it and lost weight. LighterLife is developed by experts and delivered by trained counsellors in small groups. It is for individuals with three stone or more to lose and aims to assist controlled weight loss while promoting greater understanding of food issues. Kingsley joined Siobhan Barron's LightLife group in Sowerby Bridge last November and since then has become a changed man.

He has not only lost almost eight stones in weight but his health problems have disappeared and he is now doing 15 mile runs in preparation for new physical challenges such as the Berlin Marathon and the Great North Run later this year.

"I had eczema and long-term chronic joint pains in my wrist and thumbs. The joint pains disappeared after three weeks and the eczema after six weeks. I am overjoyed as this has massively improved my quality of life," says Kingsley who finished the programme in April and has kept his weight stable for the past three months.

He is now a size he has not been since he was a teenager and says his fitness levels are at an all time high, so much so that he plans to go camping and trekking with Karl for the first time this summer.

He has never done it before because he would not have fit into a sleeping bag.

His only problem now is finding clothes small enough to fit. "I've gone from one end of the scale to the other. At one time my waist was 46/48 so I had a struggle finding trousers. Now I'm a 30inch waist and still having problems because most shops start at a size 32."