Imelda sheds her old image – and half her body weight

Date Published: {J}

It’s like having an 11-stone person on your back when you weigh 22 stone,” says Imelda Kirwan, who in the space of less than a year, has lost more than half her body weight.

Imelda, who was born and reared in Galway, now lives in Waterford, where she is a primary teacher.

Her struggle with her weight began in adulthood and continued until last year, when plagued by ill health, she realised she needed to act.

She grew up in Lenaboy Park in Salthill, one of two siblings in a family where healthy eating and exercise were the norm. Her father owned the well known Kirwan’s Butchers on Mainguard Street, which was subsequently run by her brother, Michael, who died in 2001.

“We wouldn’t have known what fizzy drinks or crisps were when we were children,” she says. “Because we didn’t get pocket money, we didn’t buy ourselves sweets. Whatever we got was doled out by our parents, so it was all very restrained.”

The family were all involved in sport, with golf being a big hobby. And she recalls that every Sunday, they would go on a mega walk, up Taylors Hill, down Threadneedle Road and onto the Prom. Later, Imelda went to UCG to study Arts, and her active lifestyle continued, as she walked to and from college three times daily.

After graduation, she went to Mary Immaculate Training College in Limerick and did a transition course to primary teaching, eventually moving to Waterford, where she has lived since.

It was then that the battle with her weight began. She got her first car and gradually stopped exercising. In addition, her diet went downhill.

“I lived alone and I couldn’t see the point in cooking dinner for one person,” she explains. So indifferent was she to the idea of cooking that she had been in her house for eight years before learning how to turn on the cooker.

“It wasn’t that I wasn’t able, I just didn’t want to.”

Imelda would buy readymade chilled dinners that could be heated in the microwave as well as sandwiches and rolls.

“I literally embraced convenience food. The problem is that you have no control of what’s in them. And then I’d add even more butter and cream. I went to the fair!”

That was in addition to huge amounts of chocolate, crisps and fizzy drinks.

“I could buy six bars of chocolate a day and I’m not talking your average size bar. I’d buy the family size and would lorry through them in a day. If I was watching television I’d be like a robot, going through a tube of Pringles and wanting a second one.”

Imelda, who used to bulk buy these items, says that she never thought about what she was doing and why.

“I ended up being 22 stone, and size 30-32. I’m five foot nine inches and I used all the excuses, like saying I was big boned. I’m not big boned!”

Through the years, she tried various weight loss programmes and went so far as to get a gastric band fitted in the early 2000s, at a time when getting this procedure done meant travelling to London. It didn’t work, she says, mostly because she learned how to get around it by making herself sick and then eating all over again. Liquidising food was another technique she used.

But this time last year, Imelda’s health started giving her serious problems and finally, she realised she had to act.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.