LOSING WEIGHT AND FEELING GREAT

Episode 255:
Show Notes  

In this episode of The Real Health and Weight Loss Podcast, Dr Mary Barson, an Australian doctor specialising in weight management and metabolic health, welcomes community member Theresa Redgwell to share her inspiring story. Theresa’s journey is one of authenticity and transformation, showing how sustainable, practical changes can lead to remarkable improvements in health and wellbeing.

• Background Challenges: Years of weight gain, chronic knee pain, poor sleep, and low energy—common struggles for many post-menopausal women.
  
• Previous Approaches: Tried multiple diets focused on appearance and clothing size, but never achieved lasting results.
  
• Discovery Moment: Found The Real Health and Weight Loss Podcast and low-carb program during an Ozempic shortage; drawn by its credibility and simplicity.
  
• 4-Week Program Takeaways:
  
• No snacking; eat only when hungry
  
• Within a week, knee pain disappeared and appetite naturally reduced
  
• Transformative Results:
  
• Lost 30 kg and 30 cm from her waist
  
• Dramatic reduction in visceral fat risk
  
• Education & Mindset Shift: Learned how cortisol, stress, and menopause impact metabolism—moved from “dieting” to sustainable lifestyle changes.
  
• New Exercise Joy: Began exercising for health and enjoyment, including taking up CrossFit—something she never imagined possible.
  
• Ongoing Support: Continued in the 12-Week Mind Body Rebalance Program to reinforce motivation and mindset, even through challenging periods like holidays.
  
• Food Freedom Achieved: No longer experiences cravings or deprivation; fully avoids ultra-processed foods.
  
• Advice for Others: Focus on long-term health and longevity rather than scale numbers or clothing sizes; invest in sustainable habits.
  

Theresa’s journey highlights the power of simple, sustainable changes, community support, and a real-food, low-carb approach for lasting health and well-being.

Episode 255: 
Transcript

Dr Mary Barson (0:04) Hello, my lovely friends. I am Dr Mary Barson.

Dr Lucy Burns (0:09) And I'm Dr Lucy Burns. We are doctors and weight management and metabolic health experts.

Both (0:12) And this is the Real Health and Weight Loss podcast!

Dr Mary Barson (00:21): Hello lovely friend, and welcome to this episode of Real Health and Weight Loss. I'm Dr Mary, and I am thrilled today to have a really wonderful guest with us — Theresa Redgwell. She is a really inspiring member of our beautiful community who has gone through a remarkable transformation — from struggling with her weight, knee pain, and low energy to achieving fantastic weight loss and fantastic changes in her health. What I love about Theresa's story is that it's one of real, sustainable success. I can't wait for you to hear how she made it all happen through simple, life-changing adjustments. Welcome, welcome Theresa! How are you?

Theresa Redgwell (01:08) I'm very well, Dr Mary, and thank you—thank you for inviting me on your podcast. It's quite an honour and a privilege, and I'm very pleased to share my story because I'm incredibly proud of what I've achieved. I'm also so grateful for what you and Dr Lucy have been able to offer me, which has led to this transformation. I'm just over the moon—so thank you.

Dr Mary Barson (01:29) You're most welcome. We are so grateful that you’ve come to share your time and energy with our beautiful listeners today. I’d love for you to share your story—perhaps start with where you start on your health journey, and what some of the key issues and problems that you were facing at the start.

Theresa Redgwell (01:50) Well, I think from listening to your podcast—I did binge-listen once I found you—I would often think, I'm not alone. This is the same story that so many women, particularly post-menopausal women, have. I would often hear myself in other people's stories. So I think my journey has been very similar to many others. I’ve ridden the rollercoaster of weight going up and down, and without sounding like a “mature person,” for most of those early adult years it was all about looks. You know, fitting into a certain size of pants and all that sort of thing. And I’ve done everything. I’d listen to your podcast and hear people say, I’ve done this, I’ve done that, and I’d think, Yep, yep, I’ve done that too. I suppose I came to a place where I was just sick of myself—sick of how I felt. I felt big and tired, and I had incredible knee pain, which I thought would be for life. It was so bad it kept me awake at night. I assumed that if I lost a few kilos, it would probably get better. Then there was a lot of media around Ozempic, and I thought, Oh, is this my journey? I’m not judging anyone who is or has been on Ozempic, by any means. But I thought got me, is this the next thing? Would my doctor even give it to me? All of that was going through my head. At that time, there was also a lot of media about the shortage of Ozempic and related products. I was just scrolling—as you do—and an article popped up. I wish I’d kept it, because it may have been your article—I’m not sure. It was one of those “mind-reading social media”, about what to do if you can’t get Ozempic. As in people who were trying to use it then couldn’t get the supplies. I thought, Oh, I wonder what do you do when you can't get Ozempic? So I opened it, and it basically outlined a low-carb lifestyle. I thought, Why wouldn’t you just do that? Why not? Again, I’m not sure if it was your article—I’ve searched and searched—so please tell me if it was! However all those algorithms worked, I ended up on your website, and it just seemed perfect: two lady Australian doctors—so there was credibility and familiarity in the sense—and a beautiful product: a 4 Week start now program. I was absolutely sick of being big and tired and not sleeping, and I thought, I’ve done everything else—why not do this? So I signed up for the four-week program and full transparency—it was to lose weight. That was it. I just wanted to get those kilos off. I went at the green list—I'm very much a "Tell me what to eat and I’ll eat that".  And so I signed up for the 4 Wee program and I remember being absolutely shocked by two of your key principles. You always say, “You’re the boss of you,” but here are some guidelines. And the two that really made me shake my head were: No snacks. I thought, No snacks? That’s completely new. Don’t eat if you’re not hungry. And I thought, What is this magic? I didn’t get this big by not being hungry! So I thought that was a bit crazy but I followed the rules. If you’ve done the cabbage soup diet, you know—you just stick to the rules. So Dr Mary, I am absolutely astounded that within one week, I had no knee pain. That was not my agenda. I thought I’d need to lose significant weight or face a knee operation. That wasn't my goal at all. And I remember after about a week thinking, My knee doesn’t hurt. This is weird. A few weeks later, my own GP said, “Oh, all the inflammation’s gone from your body.” I thought, Why didn’t you tell me this!? It had literally only been a week. I probably lost a couple of kilos, which is quite normal early on, so it certainly wasn’t the weight off my knees—it was inflammation. Then, within another week, I’d adjusted to the no snacks. I started thinking, I don’t really feel like breakfast... I think I could just eat two meals. And the change just started to happen. I couldn’t have imagined it. It was just... yeah. And I loved the food. I adjusted really quickly and easily. Years ago, I’d done I Quit Sugar, and that’s probably the closest thing I’d aligned with before and really loved. But now I understand from your program that I hadn’t actually given up savory sugars. I Quit Sugar just focuses on actual sugar—fructose—but that’s only part of the game. It was the carbohydrates that really mattered. So yeah, I was telling everyone—I was like an evangelist! People would say, What have you done? And I’d say, Are you sure you want me to tell you? Because I won’t shut up!

Dr Mary Barson (07:41) So really quickly, you had two benefits: one was the inflammation and the knee pain just poof—disappeared, and the other was that your hunger really reduced as well. You said before, “I didn’t get to this size by not being hungry all the time,” and then suddenly—you weren’t hungry all the time.

Theresa Redgwell (07:55) I really wasn’t. I settled into two meals a day very easily—very easily. And once I really got into the program and understood—which is what I love about your program, it's not just “here’s a list of foods, eat this and don’t eat that”—with the program, the videos, and your podcast, I could actually understand why. What that food was doing to my body, and perhaps why I could eat more carbs when I was younger than I can now—that helped me as well. After a period of time, I chose to eat one meal a day for a while—not to do any radical weight loss, but because I literally wasn’t hungry, Dr Mary! What is this magic? 

Dr Mary Barson (08:45) The power of real food is wonderful, isn’t it? 

Theresa Redgwell (08:47) Oh, it is. It’s so wonderful. Yes! I just was not expecting it at all. I was expecting, you know—I think it’s Dr Lucy or yourself who talks about “white-knuckling it”—we’ve all done it, to get to the next dress size or for that event... I’m well experienced at that; I could write a book on it. But this is my life now. This is how I eat. I can’t say enough how easy it is. 

Dr Mary Barson (09:17) I just love that. 

Theresa Redgwell (09:18) I wish I’d found it years ago. So, thank you. 

Dr Mary Barson (09:20) You made these changes whilst you were busy.  Tell us a little bit about yourself—you’re a busy woman, aren’t you? You’ve got a lot going on.

Theresa Redgwell (09:28) I've got a bit going on. I'm a 50-something-year-old and I work in education. I'm a Head of College, which comes with a lot of responsibilities. And, you know, every job is stressful—I'm not taking away from any other role—but leading up to this time had been particularly stressful for me. I’ve been through those times in my life, but I now understand from your program the impact of cortisol on the body. That was a lightbulb moment for me—realising how stress was affecting my weight and overall health. So yes, I’m a busy wife, mother, all of those things, with a highly stressful job—as most people have. But usually, during those times, I would put on weight. If you looked back over my rollercoaster, you’d see that a lot of stress attached to thoese “ups” were tied to stress—not so much the “downs.” The job is still stressful, and that’s not going to change—but I was still able to make these changes, and I’ve kept them going for a long time now. This is just how I eat. It fits in with the family. I still have an adult daughter living at home, and my husband—he gets what I eat, but maybe I’ll put some potato on his plate or he might have pasta with his spaghetti sauce. But I’m not cooking different meals for different people in the house. It’s been so easy and smooth—and, dare I say it, money-saving! I’m not buying all that rubbish into the house. Initially, my goal was to lose weight—I’m not going to deny that—but now it’s all about health and how I feel. I lost 30 kilos, which I’m incredibly proud of. But quite early on, once I realised this was a lifestyle change and that my health was my real priority (rather than just fitting into a pair of jeans), I stumbled upon something that said your waist measurement is a better indicator of health risk. It was from the Australian Heart Foundation and said that ideally, women should aim for a waist under 80 cm. I’d taken all my measurements at the beginning—old habits!—and I was shocked at my waist size. I’ve always been pear-shaped, so my waist wasn’t really an issue… until menopause crept up and had other ideas. In the end, while I lost 30 kilos, what I’m most proud of is losing 30 centimetres off my waist. And as I always say to everyone: that's a whole ruler. 

Dr Mary Barson (12:14) A whole ruler. Spoken like a true educator!Yes, it is—a whole ruler off your waist! That’s awesome, isn’t it?

Theresa Redgwell (12:22) Yes, it’s huge! And I understand from your podcast about visceral fat and… what’s the word? Subcutaneous—yes, that one! So, that understanding of visceral fat and its impact on health has been a game-changer for me. I now want to live a long, healthy, active life. You use a term for it—about longevity and health—and I don’t want to be the old person sitting in a wheelchair for 20 years. I want to be able to run around with my grandchildren and do all of those things. So yes, I’m really proud of that.

Dr Mary Barson (13:14) You should be! And I'm interested that you said it started off like a diet—you know, you were approaching this with the goal of weight loss and had your "diet" hat on. You’re an accomplished dieter, a dieting aficionado, like so many of us out there. But then there was a transition, and now it’s just sustainable. Could you tell us a bit more about that transition? You’ve already touched on it, but what do you think has made it easy for you now to go from "diet with diet rules, tell me what to do" to "this is just what I do now"?

Theresa Redgwell (13:36) Yeah, I think apart from the knee pain, I started sleeping through the night. So, it wasn’t only the knee keeping me up—obviously, at this phase of life, women my age will always talk about being awake at night, getting up to go to the toilet, all that sort of thing. Then, I started to sleep through the whole night. You know, it’s well-discussed that sleep is the lead domino in your health. Once it became noticeable that I was losing weight, people— which is lovely—always said, “You look great!” They’d compliment my looks, which is lovely. And don’t get me wrong, everyone likes that; we’re human, and we like to be told that. But I found myself, without thinking, replying, “Well, thanks, but I feel great. I just feel great.” No diet, quotation marks, has ever done that. I would reply with, "I feel great," and I do feel really good. I think I'd lost about 10 kilos, and I started CrossFit. I never thought those words would come out of my mouth! It was tough; it’s a difficult form of exercise, but it was really tough at first. But I found really great coaches who worked with me at my ability level and size, so I was still big. Then, I started to exercise because it made me feel good, not to lose weight, because I realised I could have actually followed this program and still achieved the weight loss without the exercise. I was walking and all of that sort of thing. So, that was another mind shift, because I had come from that, you know, exercise-to-burn-weight mindset. I wasn’t doing that; I was exercising because I felt great. You know, it’s all new Dr Mary! 

Dr Mary Barson (15:25) I love it! So good! It's just beautiful! It's all just like, all these beautiful little petals of this story are opening up, and it's just getting better and better. You did our 4-week program, which is a self-paced program that focuses, you know, really on the "what" and the "how" of the physical aspects of low-carb real food. But then, you actually chose to go on and do the 12-week program, the 12Week MindBody Rebalance. Why did you choose to do that, and what did you get out of that program, do you think? 

Theresa Redgwell (15:55) I did the 4-week because that was all that was on offer at that time. I'm very much, once I decide to do something, I do it. I started, you know, the next day, and by the end of the four weeks, I'd felt great but I wasn't there by any means. That was coming up to around November-ish time, and you would know— I can't remember the exact date, but you were then offering the 12-week program, because you only have set times when you can do the 12-week program, not at any time. I thought, you know what, I don’t want Christmas to blow this for me. I just wasn't quite there yet. Right now, you could throw anything at me and I’d be fine, but at that time, I was still at that tipping point where I could have fallen off, for want of a better term. I know you don't like that.

Dr Mary Barson (16:47) No, no, I know what you mean. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

Theresa Redgwell (16:51) Mentally, I thought I was so motivated that I just wanted a tool to keep me on the path I was on because you don't lose 30 kilos overnight. That takes time, especially to do it safely and healthily. So, what the 12-week program gave me was that continued investment in myself, keeping me in the mindset. Whenever I’m in the car, your podcast is playing, I’m watching the videos, all of that. Through that tricky time of Christmas, it just gave me that added security, so to speak, to keep in the headspace and to know it was achievable. You give really good options; you might go to something and decide, "You know, tonight I’m actually going to choose to have something," and I would do that. I would make that decision, and then I would find I’d get there and think, "I actually don’t want it." If we fast forward past Christmas, I was away at Easter with friends, and we were traveling. I made the decision, which you often talk about in your podcast: "I’ve made the decision that at Easter, all I wanted was a dark chocolate Lindt ball that was living in my head." I made the decision. There’s nothing wrong with it, and that’s what I’m going to do. And we got there, and I had the Lindt ball, and I was so disappointed that I had to have a second one because it just didn’t bring this glorious, overwhelming, pleasurable experience that I thought it was going to be. I actually had a second one, not as an excuse to have a thing. I thought, "That’s not what my mind has been telling me the experience would be." So, I thought, "You know what? That’s just how it is. I just don’t eat these things anymore." I remember in your podcast, Dr. Lucy spoke about how, I think, her children are vegetarian, and when they’re at a barbecue, they just say, "We just don’t eat meat." I thought, "Oh, I do that with soft drink." Years ago, I stopped drinking soft drink because I can’t moderate it, and I thought, "Oh, I do that already with soft drink. I could just do that with everything," and that was a real light bulb moment for me too. I just don’t eat that stuff anymore, and I genuinely, hand on heart, am not looking for it anymore. It’s a beautiful... it’s food freedom. That’s what it is. 

Dr Mary Barson (19:26) Yes, food freedom is glorious, isn’t it? You don’t have that mental chatter; it’s just easy. Yes, I’m so pleased that you have that food freedom!

Theresa Redgwell (19:35) And look, I don’t want to mislead anyone; if we go to a beautiful restaurant and there’s something on the dessert menu and I’ve thought about it in advance, I might choose to have a little bit of something. But I honestly, often the next day, once I wake up, I say to my daughter, “Yeah, I shouldn’t have done that.” My body spent all night saying, “We don’t eat like that anymore.” 

Dr Mary Barson (20:02) That’s true, but you can go off-plan. If you want to, of course, but you do always feel a little bit... well, a little bit cruddy afterwards. Yep. 

Theresa Redgwell (20:10) Oh, very much, very much. And I don't get those cravings if I do. So, for example, if I were to have something a little bit sweet for dessert, like for a special occasion, I don't wake up the next day craving all the food. Which you asked me about going from the 4-week to the 12-week, and I think at that time I would have been vulnerable to that. You know, if I had a little bit of something, I might have wanted all the somethings. And I think by sticking with the 12-week, it allowed me to go through that process and that adjustment where I don't anymore have that feeling of vulnerability, like if I have some, I'll want all of it. Or anything like that anymore.

Dr Mary Barson (20:52) Mm-hmm, so you're six months on now, 30 kilos down, feeling good, food freedom, sleeping better, knee pain better, all of these fabulous things. Your whole relationship with food has been transformed. So, you are absolutely smashing it, which is amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your story. I'd like to know, have you got any advice for people out there who want to make healthy changes?

Theresa Redgwell (21:22) Oh, I think it's looking past the scale weight, it's looking past the size on the tag of your clothes, it's investing in your body. You only get one chance at it, and most people in their lives have known people who suffer from illness and disease, and I don't take that for granted anymore. You know, I only get this one body this one time. I can't go back and change the past, but I can certainly change what happens in the future. I definitely want that body to serve me well. So, when I exercise now, for example, you know, burpees are about falling over and getting back up again, and that, for older people, is a real thing. So I'm not claiming to be older yet, but I'm investing in it now, and just the way I feel, you know, if you could bottle it, it'd be worth millions. I've never ever lost weight in the past. I have done all the things, lost all the weight, and then found it again. I've never, ever in those times said to anybody, "I feel great, I feel amazing," and I do right now. You know, right now it's after work, and I still feel great. I got up very early to exercise. That's what I choose to do. It suits my lifestyle, and I still feel really good. I think that's what I would want people to understand the most: what impact rubbish food has on their bodies, and I definitely took that for granted in my early years. Mm-hmm, and it's not necessarily just carbs. It's just what I tell people now because you do get a bit of judgment. What I really tell people is, "I actually don't eat ultra-processed foods. If it's in a packet, I don't eat it." That's really the shift that happened for me. It's not so much about the vegetables, it's that ultra-processed food that's highly addictive, highly satiating—you can't stop literally because that's how it's designed—and I just don't go there now, and I don't want it. I look at it now and just see it as rubbish. I don't look at it and think, "Oh, I wish I could have that," or "I'm not allowed to have that." I don't want it. I don't want it in my body, and I know what it does.

Dr Mary Barson (23:45) Ah, I love that! Thank you, you absolute legend, for sharing your inspiring story. Yes, smashing it, and I think the sky's the limit. I could just see you continuing to live your best life for many, many, many, many years to come now. So, thank you. Thank you. You are a fantastic ambassador and a great success. 

Theresa Redgwell (24:08) Thank you. I've enjoyed talking to you, and I hope that my story can perhaps inspire somebody else and know that if I can do it, anyone can do it because I love the food.

Dr Mary Barson (24:21) Wonderful! Bye-bye now! 

Theresa Redgwell (24:23) Thank you, Dr Mary. Goodbye!

Dr Lucy Burns (24:28) The information shared on the Real Health and Weight Loss Podcast, including show notes and links, provides general information only. It is not a substitute, nor is it intended to provide individualised medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, nor can it be construed as such. Please consult your doctor for any medical concerns.

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