I live in Leicestershire, with my husband and I have two grown up children, and I'm a school business manager in a large Primary School in the inner city. And I think that the first time I went to a Weight Watchers class was when I was 12 or 13, and my mom bought me a subscription to Weight Watchers for my birthday.

And that was the beginning of a lifelong trip round every weight loss programme, you can think of.

And I've done every one of them, I've done the milkshakes and I've done the bars and I've done that, going into the lessons and listening to the stories of women with whom I had nothing in common, and couldn't bear it.

So when I was approaching my 40th birthday I decided I had to do something to get rid of these stones of weight because it has always been a cycle, lose this new stone, a few stone on that few more stone on, and it's no coincidence that took my relationship with my mental health, and my depression also went in cycles over the years.

And as I was approaching 40 I thought right. I have to lose this weight, once and for all. So, I went to see a psychodynamic therapist at great expense, whom I saw for several years and never addressed my relationship with food issues. I saw a nutritional dietitian who tried to make me take every supplement you could think of, and every diet going and did nothing at all to resolve my relationship with food. I tried my GP who sent me on a 10 week course for people with obsessive compulsive eating obsessive compulsive eating disorder. And that did absolutely nothing for me. And I continued in the cycle of losing weight gaining weight, to gain even more weight, and I had about given up really.

And I decided, actually, I'm just going to be big my whole life, I'm not going to be interested in what anybody else says to me, I'm going to eat what I want. I'm going to stuff my face as much as I want to say to everybody else, I'm not going to go along with this image of how women should be logic logical or deep down, I was incredibly unhappy, it was Autumn, 2020, when I stumbled across the academy on Facebook.

It was one of those things that popped up to me. I don't know how or why, but I looked at it and I thought, it's just another one of those things it's another one of those gimmicks, it's never going to work for me, all these women who say it, really, in spite of them because they're brilliant and I'm just useless and skipped over and it kept popping back, I kept trying to get rid of it and it kept popping back up do you up Clair.

And I downloaded your 10 ways to change your mind set by overcoming overeating or something like that.

And I read it and put it on a pile of paperwork, but something made me go back to it, and I read it again and showed it to my other half and said, ‘What do you think of this’, and he said, ‘Well, you've done everything else’, so you may as well join the Academy thing and see how you get on.

So, I joined the Academy, and I became addicted to the podcasts really quickly. I listened to all of them in the space of about a week. And I was actually somebody who was using the same language as I did about food and about control and about me as a woman having responsibility for my feelings that might behaviour and knowing it all in my head, but not being able to put into practice and apply that to my relationship with food, and in every other aspect of my life, and quite a bright girl really do it for myself.

I couldn't be nice to myself, I couldn't support myself, I couldn't figure out the answers for myself.

So, I joined the programme.

I started the academy in November, at 16 Stone 11. And by Christmas, I had lost a stone and a half, and my relationship with food had changed completely.

And I know that sounds corny because that's what it says everywhere, but actually it really had.

And I approached Christmas with trepidation because I thought, ‘that’ll be it’. And obviously, working in a primary school, your life is defined by terms and the school holidays. I thought, ‘I’ll have two weeks off over Christmas and put it all back on. It's a disaster waiting to happen.’

And then Clair did a session on how to plan for Christmas and how to how to not put it back on during the Christmas holiday.

And so, I set to get on with that and I gave myself a two week window, which was the two weeks of the school holidays and I said that's my Christmas period. I planned every day what I was going to do.

I didn't deprive myself.

I allowed myself to have treats. I think there were two chocolates out of the chocolate bowl every day that I was allowed to have, and I planned it meticulously.

And by the time I went back to school. Two weeks later, I was shocked to find that I actually lost half a pound, I aimed to maintain, and I'd lost half a pound.

But even more importantly, was that I was in control for the whole of that two week Christmas holiday. And that just made me feel amazing.

The difference is that this programme gives you the opportunity to learn about yourself, and to fix things. And some of the things that you address have got nothing to do with eating.

You address things that you’ve spent your whole life, knowing needs addressing, but you haven't been sure of how to fix it or how it's broken or why it was broken in the first place.

You do learn how to love life. Yes you join because you want to focus on the weight, but this is about so much more than how to lose weight. This is about how to live the life that you want to live.

 It's about how to be a better person. A better person to yourself. A better person to your family. It's about how to use the skills that you've got.

Clair presents information to us in ways that we could never have put together by ourselves, although we're bright women. And actually, sometimes Clair’s needed to give us a kick up the backside to get on with it. And we've all needed that at different times. Although mostly you're, really softly spoken supportive lovely Clair. And it’s been so so valuable, and I’d have paid that money 234 times over, for what I've got out of it, because the value has just been incredible.

So, I'm just really grateful that I stumbled across you on that Facebook page.

So just to wrap up, I started with The Academy in November 2020 and joined the Mastermind in January 2021, and we just finished it. We’re now in August 2021 I've lost nearly four and a half stone. But somehow, even more important than that is that I have this collection of amazing tools for my life that I have learnt to be able to apply in lots of different situations. I use them at work. I use them in my relationship with my husband. , I use them in my relationship with my grown up children.

I teach the tools to other people, because I think they've made such a difference to me, and I feel almost, evangelical about wanting to share these tools with other people because they're so effective.

And I would say, if you're wondering whether to sign up to the mastermind or not. If you're wondering whether you can really afford it or not, I would say, this really will change your life, and as corny as that sounds, actually, I think there are at least six women on the course that I did, and certainly for me include you, who would say this really did change our lives, and I will be forever grateful for that.