'How I went from fattie to feeling fabulous'

SOMEHOW I had always expected to stay skinny. Being tall and bony throughout my school days, university and early adulthood, it never occurred to me that I would be any different as I got older.

As I sailed through my 30s and 40s eating and drinking more or less anything I fancied, I pitied anyone who needed to go on a diet and felt pretty smug. Surely I would stay this way forever.

It was midway through 2004 that I took a long, hard look at myself in the bathroom mirror and thought: "I don't believe it, I've become a fatty!"

I couldn't argue with the scales. I had been under 11 stones for decades but the terrible truth was there to read in faint red numbers: weight - 15 stones 2lbs.

Because of my height - I'm 6ft 3in in bare feet - people hadn't tended to notice. But when my mum said, with commendable Geordie frankness: "You know what Barry, you're getting a really fat face", I realised I had to confront the terrible truth.

With the Big Five-O on the horizon, unless I did something radical I was going to become an all too common feature of the North-East landscape - an obese couch potato with a higher risk of heart attack, stroke, diabetes... you name it..

At first, I thought I would try to take more exercise. I started swimming at the Dolphin leisure centre in Darlington. Now this may not be a big deal for some people, but the last time I swam in a swimming pool I was probably a teenager. This was serious stuff.

Yet, despite putting in 40 minutes breaststroke twice a week, my weight hardly moved. What was I going to do?

Enter my wife, Marj, with a brilliant idea.

Marj, who had also seen her weight creep up to 11 stones one pound, had been encouraged by a friend, Julie Hope, to join WeightWatchers.

As my involvement in cooking at home verges on the non-existent, this meant I would be completely at the mercy of Marj's new calorie-conscious regime.

At first I was downright suspicious. Did this mean we would be reduced to existing on raw vegetables? An even worse scenario came to mind: no Czech lager or Chilean red wine.

But as Marj got into the routine and learned the essential lore of WeightWatchers, it became clear that the much-feared slimmers' fare was not too different to our normal diet. In fact, it was a doddle.

The key to WeightWatchers is to classify every food according to a points system. Based on calorific value and the amount of 'bad' saturated fat content, foods can range from zero points for green, leafy vegetables and most salads, to 8.5 points for an ultra sweet, fat-packed Magnum ice cream lolly.

As long as you 'point' foods before eating them, the rest is common sense. Slimmers enrolled on the WW programme are encouraged to eat lots of fruit and vegetables, trim the fat off meat and avoid foodstuffs with a high fat content.

Particularly frowned on are cakes, cheese, chocolate and biscuits, although WW has a range of low-fat alternatives which are always available from group leaders.

According to your body weight and height, you are allocated a daily points allowance which is calculated to allow you to safely lose ten per cent of your body weight. You can save up points for special occasions or top up your total by increasing the amount of exercise you do.

This ten per cent target is the bedrock of the WeightWatchers system and the advisors who lead slimming groups up and down the country predict that most people will hit this target within 12 to 14 weeks.

Once you hit the target, you no longer pay the weekly fee of £4.75 (£3.90 for students or OAPs) but you can still attend meetings. However, if your weight increases by five pounds above your recommended weight you have to start paying again.

Marj explains why she joined the club. "I was becoming increasingly frustrated that, in spite of taking lots of exercise, two to three step aerobic classes a week as well as a tap dancing lesson for the last couple of years, I had put on over a stone in weight."

She almost thought that at the age of 45, this gradual accumulation of weight was just part of getting older. "Part of me really hated that idea and I was looking around for a solution," says Marj.

Thanks to her friend's encouragement, Marj found a weekly WW group at a convenient time and place in Darlington and enthusiastically threw herself into the programme. She spent the next few weeks poring over WW food ratings lists and suggested menus.

Marj's target weight was set at ten stones at the outset. Although I was not officially enrolled in the WW programme, my aim was to get down to below 14 stones. Marj was pretty confident about making progress. "We had a good, healthy diet anyway. I love cooking - I prepare 90 per cent of the meals we eat," she says.

What she cut out completely were crisps (we used to have at least one bag each every night, despite them being three points) cakes and biscuits.

We also decided to do without any butter or spread on toast while sandwiches would get a thin layer of low-fat mayonnaise. "It sounds horrible but it is amazing how quickly you get used to it," says Marj.

There seemed to be two dangerous times, before our evening meal, when we were used to eating crisps, and mid-afternoon. The first problem was zapped by eating carrot sticks, zero points but good at appeasing hunger pangs. In the office, I made sure I had a box of raisins (low-rated snack food) to tide me over, as well as plenty of fruit.

Amazingly, the weight began to fall off both of us. Virtually every week, we would both lose a pound or even more. What was difficult to understand (although I wasn't complaining) was the fact that I was losing weight at virtually the same rate as my wife, even though I was doing no more than my normal 'exercise' of walking the 15 minutes to and from my car every working day. Marj was still going to the gym two or three times a week and tap dancing.

We also found that our habit of having a couple of drinks most nights (sorry, doc) did not seem to affect our weekly weigh-ins. Marj achieved her target weight of ten stones at the end of eight weeks. Now, at the end of 21 weeks of WW membership, she now weighs nine stones and four pounds, a total weight loss of 25 pounds. She is thrilled to bits and feels much better about herself.

During the same period, I have steadily shed weight and now weigh 13 stones five pounds. This means that between us, we have lost 50 pounds in weight.

I'm elated that my sagging jowls and beer gut have been drastically reduced. On the down side, I may have to replace most of my trousers, which are now too big for me around the waist, but what the hell!

None of this surprises Ann Santon, from Bishop Auckland. Ann, 57, leads the WW group Marj joined. A successful WW slimmer herself, Ann shed three stones during 2003 to get down to her current, petite weight of eight stones 13 pounds.

"I do this because I like helping people," says Ann, who now runs no less than five slimmers' groups, as well as doing a part-time job at Morrisons in Bishop Auckland - ironically working in the store's cake shop.

"Nothing is more satisfying than helping someone attain their goal weight. A lot of people cry or are ecstatic. They thank me but I tell them, 'You're the one who has done it.'"

For more information visit www.weightwatchers.co.uk or tel. 0845 345 1500.