Mimi - my name’s Rosemary. I was born at Semaphore a suburb of Adelaide in South Australia on the 19th May, 1941. I grew up there, was married there then moved away. I have one child, Greg, who is now nearly 36. My other son is Geoff’s lad Mick. They were born within 10 weeks of each other and are great mates.

I had a carefree childhood, a father whom I adored, and a mother who taught me all the domestic skills, aaaggh! In retrospect it’s no wonder I she and I didn’t get on that well. Fancy teaching me that stuff!!!

I played a lot of sport in my youth and because I was always rushing around I managed to keep my weight under control, then disaster struck and I damaged a knee cartilage. From then on I began to put on weight at a steady few pounds a year. I took up golf, but I never lost anything.

I married Geoff whom I had been seeing for some years, and from the time of his heart attack golf went out the window, and my weight and asthma became more of a problem. We adventured around the country, worked here, and visited there, until we began working stores on aboriginal communities. We retired from that in April last year and went on a cruise to the South Pacific. I went on a disability pension, and was very depressed about weighing 112 kgs. Gosh I’m not very tall, I was sedentary, I was “gluggy”, not wanting to do anything, and most of all knew I was slowly killing myself with overweight, hypertension and cholesterol problems. I went to my doctor last October and told her (almost crying) that I had been on low cal, low fat, balanced diets, unbalanced diets for years and nothing had worked for me except a short spell on WW which as a pensioner I couldn’t afford.. She immediately introduced me to Atkins.

My husband passed away in March, I lost my best mate, my carer, my lover, my world all at once, and it seems silly to say this, but the joy of feeling “clean” and the sense of well-being I now have has helped me to cope with this terrible loss. I am soon to have a hernia operation and later some work done on my hip, but having lost all this weight (over 30kgs) I know that all of this will be just fine. Instead of being a couch potato slowly eating myself to death, being ashamed of my obesity and feeling worthless and useless, I am looking forward now to an active life of travel and adventure, of meeting and making friends, of confidence and self worth. Looking back I think I have always had an insulin problem. People reckon Atkins is bad????? Not for me it isn’t!!!!