Nurse Sheds The Pounds

Fans of ITV’s This Time Next Year with Davina McCall will know Sharon-Anne Martin already. The biker-nurse’s weight loss journey, losing 6 stone in 12 months*, was featured on the show and is inspiration to anyone who’d like to make a change…

Like many of the show’s dieters, Sharon-Anne was helped along by Bodychef; cooking and delivering a personalised, calorie-controlled, fresh-made diet plan. After filming, we caught up with Sharon-Anne to see how she’s got on since reaching her target and to find out where she’s going next!

I miss all the meals! And that preparation. Because the job I do is quite busy and when I get home it’s so much easier to just get something that’s already prepared and just warm it up! I‘ve got to cook everything from scratch again now!

As a nearly 17 stone district nurse, Sharon-Anne felt like a hypocrite a year ago. She admits that her advice on healthy eating often fell on deaf ears. ‘I’d have patients looking at me and I could tell exactly what they were thinking.’

Sharon-Anne describes struggling with day-to-day work tasks and how, eventually, ‘it came to a point where I was struggling to get up off the floor.’ On one particular day, after examining a leg wound, Sharon-Anne was helped up by a patient fifty years her senior. ‘And it just came to the crunch then,’ she says. ‘I thought Right, I’ve got to do something before I end up being a patient myself!’

I was crouching down changing some dressings on a 90-year old patient’s legs, and I just got stuck down there… I couldn’t get myself up because of my joints.

One year on, and six stone lighter, Sharon-Anne feels completely different. She’s gone down 8 dress sizes, has a fresh attitude to food and even says she’s got more confidence in the bedroom!

Life is so much easier; I’ve got so much more energy! My skin and my hair are so much better. I feel more radiant! People are saying I look younger and – I’m back in my bike leathers!

After making her pledge on This Time Next Year, Sharon-Anne tried calorie counting and preparing healthy meals herself. But, juggling with weight-loss and a new job, when the show put her in touch with Bodychef she jumped at the chance: ‘I found it a lot easier! It took that burden off – not to prepare my food. It was all sorted out for you. You’ve got everything you want.’

12 months of cooked, delivered, calorie controlled meals have made a lasting impression, says Sharon-Anne, changing how she thinks about meals and what her eating habits are. ‘I was eating with my eyes before… It educates you’, she tells us, ‘and it fills you up as well!’

Sharon-Anne’s still losing weight. Although she’s finished her time with Bodychef, she says she’s learnt important lessons from what was on her plan and there are even recipes she misses – ‘I think I could do with those turkey patties now – and with the Persian salad.’

With Bodychef itself, I know everything’s all portion controlled and all calorie controlled as well, but it really really was the quality of the food for me.

Sharon-Anne even took her new-found healthy-eating ethos into work. She knows how busy nursing staff get and easy that makes it to spend time snacking. But with her new outlook, and a team to look out for, she now makes sure that everyone has time to sit down for a decent lunch-break. As she puts it, ‘if we don’t look after ourselves, our patients won’t get looked after. I found having those meals prepared enabled me to start having a lunch break. Which we’re all having now, it’s great. And we’re not tired!’

Find out more about Sharon-Anne’s weight loss journey!

Read about all of our This Time Next Year dieters

*Results may vary by individual