Source: Courtesy of Shaneka Lambert / Fitness Fridays
In the only 24 years that Shaneka Lambert has been on this earth, she’s spent the vast majority of that time battling with her weight. Let her mother tell it, she’s been pining for food in an unhealthy way since she was a newborn.
“My mom says when I was first born that she had to take me to the doctor because I wouldn’t stop eating and she constantly had to keep feeding me,” she said. “From then I just kept eating and eating and just went up and up.”
By the time the Bedford resident (England) hit 20 years old, she reached her highest weight of 160.6 kgs, which is around 354 pounds. Her body, at such a young age, was already starting to give her trouble, and the threat of diabetes and heart disease, prevalent health issues in her family, was looming.
“I didn’t want my health to get to a place where I had like diabetes or where I would have something that’s irreversible, but I was at that point,” she said.
So she got on a diet plan, the UK version of Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers, and after some serious dedication, she began to see the weight fall off. From there, Lambert started hitting the gym, going from a strong commitment to cardio to weightlifting. Four years later, she’s since lost more than 165 pounds. The key to making that happen was not warnings from other people, but as she shared with us, deciding for herself that she wanted and needed to turn her life around if she was going to truly get to enjoy it.
We talked to the UK-based health and wellness advocate about her amazing transformation, trying to embrace her body as she deals with loose skin, and how she went from buying fast food three times a week at the least to picking a clean home cooked meal over a “takeaway” any day of the week.
MadameNoire: How long has your weight been an issue? Is it something you battled with as a kid or was there a life event that caused you to put on weight?
Shaneka Lambert: No, I’ve struggled with it all my life. About four years ago, I started having issues with my weight where my body was starting to hurt. Simple things like walking up the stairs was a struggle. I started to find that really hard. So yeah, four years ago I thought, enough is enough. If I don’t do anything now, it’s going to be way too late. At that time, when I was with my boyfriend, I wanted to have a child, but they said I was too overweight, “That’s why you don’t get regular periods” and all that stuff. It led to this, me wanting to do better.
Was there one specific catalyst that inspired you to make a change? Like you said, you were considering having children and were finding these barriers in your way.
My main catalyst was my health. At the time, the issues I had were reversible, but if I left them and let them get worse later, they wouldn’t be. My health would have deteriorated. Diabetes runs in my family and heart conditions are very high in my family on both sides. I wanted to get things together before it was too late.
Also, my parents were starting to get worried about my weight. They were saying, “Hey, it’s enough now.” They started talking about it and when they did, it hit me like, I am really young and I should do something about it while I can control it. So yeah, I just tried, and in the beginning, it was very small weight losses. Then my cousin encouraged me to try [diet program] Slimming World, and with that, that’s when the weight literally started to come off. You have Weight Watchers in America, we have Slimming World in the UK. So my cousin took me to that and said, “Try this out and see if it works for you.” Literally, that worked a lot. I eventually stopped going to the Slimming World classes and was carrying on at home by myself. I adapted to the diet a little bit and I felt it was a bit boring eating the same things over and over again. I was still focused on my diet though, but then I started going to the gym. I’ve been going to the gym now for about a year and a half, but probably now doing weights for four months. It’s been a slow process.
So you had great success once you adapted to the Slimming World diet and started exercising in different ways. In what ways has weightlifting really helped to propel your efforts?
I was getting loose skin and I thought, I need to tone up properly before I even look into surgery to help with it. I was advised to tone up, with my dad saying I needed to tone up for at least a year and see where it can get me. My skin was really really saggy and loose before, but now it’s actually starting to tighten up. It’s minimal, but it has changed within the last couple of months, so I’m going to keep going with it to see if it can help me before I look into skin removal surgery.
You’re sure that’s the next step you want to take?
Definitely. It’s not going to go completely, and if it does still look how it looks now, eventually I will want to look into skin removal. It’s about finding the right person, I guess.
How do you go on this journey in the meantime then of trying to embrace your body in this new way and practice being kind to yourself when you are at the same time looking in the mirror and seeing this loose skin?
I’m really trying to embrace it, but literally, my skin, I find it so embarrassing that I will cover up. This year though, my goal is that if I post more pictures about my loose skin, I hope I will feel more confident in myself and just start to accept it. If I know that other people can accept it, I can accept it. So me taking pictures now and showing my skin difference and what it looks like, I feel like it is helping me get used to it and know, this is me. I need to get used to this because all of my life I’ve literally been covered up. I’ve never shown any part of my body. Now that I have thinner arms and thinner legs, I do want to show my body, but it’s just the loose skin. I’m not too sure. So me posting pictures and trying to like get me and everyone else to embrace my skin, it makes me feel a bit more comfortable.
What has been the very big as well as the smaller but still important change that has been most fulfilling for you?
This is going to sound so silly, but my major thing is being able to go into a shop and literally be able to pick up anything I want. When I was bigger, I had to order clothes from online because there aren’t many shops in England to just go out and buy clothes for bigger people. Now I’m just able to literally go to any shop, even at the supermarket, pick out anything and say, “Yeah, I want that” and literally buy it. That’s a really big perk to me. And a smaller one would be, and I really took it for granted, walking. I never knew how I struggled so much walking. I would go up stairs and be sweating and I really couldn’t breathe. But now, I can run up the stairs and I do not take that for granted. I appreciate it [laughs]. I can literally run.
I’m sure it was also hard to be only 20 years old and to already have so much discomfort just walking up the stairs.
Yeah, it was especially hard because I work in a children’s home. It would have four floors and I would have to walk up so many stairs to take all these kids. By the time I got to the top, I couldn’t breathe. I would have to stand there for five minutes to get my breathe back. It was a lot. It was bad.
What efforts have you made to ensure that this is a long-lasting or permanent change? As you noted, you may put on a few pounds here and there, but what is, in your heart and mind, keeping you from regressing to where you were before? Because for many people, food can be a crutch to deal with different things, including emotions.
I try my hardest to limit the unhealthy food that comes into my house. When I do food shop, I may have a few treats, but I know not to buy too much because I will overeat. So if I just stick to buying minimal treats that I like and have them once every other day or once a week, then I’m able to stick to it easier. I literally shop off a list and have to know what I’m getting and get out.
For someone who may ask, how would you summarize what the keys were to losing as much weight as you did?
I would say, definitely portion control was a big deal. My portions used to be out of control because they were so big. When I first started my weight loss I was living at my mom’s house, and so she made sure my plates were much smaller than what I was having before. I had to make sure that half of it was vegetables and then the rest were protein and carbs. That was a big change, because before, I used to eat little vegetables. I hated them. I wouldn’t really put vegetables on my plate to be honest. But she made sure I changed my portions and added more vegetables to my diet.
And then I realized I had to think before I ate. Am I actually hungry or am I eating because I’m bored? A lot of the time I would eat because I was bored, so I had to realize I would have an appetite because I wasn’t doing anything. So I thought, do something first and if you’re still hungry, come back later and eat. That was a big thing, too, because boredom eating is what I did a lot of. Also, with the food side, I started to eat less processed foods. I would eat a takeaway meal about three to four times a week at least. So I’d start eating more at home, home cooked meals. That also saved me money and home cooked meals are so much better than takeaway meals as well.
And as far as the workouts?
I would say, literally, it’s all about the gym. When I started at the gym I did start from just being fixated on cardio, but as it went on, I obviously started picking up weights and trying classes. But yeah, I would say, start with cardio to help you get into a routine. I would do an hour of cardio of like 15 minutes on a bike, 15 minutes on a treadmill, 15 minutes on a rower and then 15 on an [elliptical]. Eventually I cut my cardio. Now I’m doing a five-minute warm-up with cardio and the rest of my hour or however long I’m there for, I’m lifting weights. I’m just trying to build muscle now, because when I wasn’t building muscle, my body wasn’t looking so toned up. But now I’m starting to build muscle and develop more lean fat so it’s much better. Weight lifting has changed my body a lot.
What is your advice to someone who wants to get started but they’re not feeling motivated or so sure that this time will be different than any other?
You can not start unless you are truly ready to start. And I know people around you will say, “You have to lose weight, you should do this,” it won’t work unless you are truly ready to do it for yourself. That’s the first step. Afterward, realizing you want to do it and need to do it, I would say, focus on changing your diet first before you start doing exercise because I think the diet change and the nutrients, that’s a big part of the whole weight-loss journey. Once you get your diet under control, then work in the exercise. Diet is definitely one of the first steps to make a big change. Even small changes, little things like portion control or eating at certain times of the day or drinking more fluids so you feel more full when you eat, those are important. Little things make a huge difference. You may think it’s not working, but really, your body is working. It might take you a while to see it, but you will eventually see it. I eventually got down to this and I’m so happy. It’s life-changing, it truly is.
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