Having lost 4 stones in weight and become very fit since retirement, I feel keen to encourage other people who might like to do the same. During my career in a demanding sedentary job, there was little time for anything but work, and I became very overweight for a long time. After retiring I was eager to develop new interests, and getting fit and losing weight were a high priority. I did a lot of walking, and when a Sports Centre opened in my local village about 4 years ago, it gave a great boost to my aim, providing lots of helpful activity classes. I was soon going 3 times a week or more to aerobics, Pilates and yoga. This worked off the calories, made me more supple, and prepared the way for when adult ballet classes would appear on the horizon.

I tried to eat sensibly, but was not getting on very well with weight loss on my own, so I had myself referred to a National Health dietician, under whose excellent guidance I lost 2 stones in 2 years. I was still not at the kind of weight I wanted, however, and certainly not the shape, and I was starting to put on a bit of weight again, so I followed up a leaflet put through my door and joined Slimming World.

This organisation meets once a week, weighs everyone and gives advice and support. Its system of diet is very sensible, not forcing people to be forever counting calories, but recommending an emphasis on certain types of foods over others. Some kinds of food can be eaten as much as one wants, but with others one must be more sparing, and some one should try to avoid altogether. As with the dietician's advice, one tries to cut down as much as possible on fats and sugars - and pastry and ready-made dishes are major culprits here. But Slimming World has good psychology and recognises that people need occasional treats; it is also non-judgmental.

Their system seems to work, and it is possible to lose at least a pound or half a pound a week with it. I have lost a further 2½ stone with them, making a total loss off my top weight of around 4 stone, and I have got a proper hourglass shape back. The community of slimmers who attend these classes are of great support, and are very nice people with whom one wants to keep in contact.



My greatest passion at the moment is learning to do ballet. I've loved watching it all my life, ever since I saw the Red Shoes film as a tiny child and then watched Doreen Wells and Anton Dolin dancing on stage in Coppelia. But my mother could not afford to send me to dancing classes. I also believed the commonly held myth that, if you haven't started ballet by the age of 7, it's too late. Then, a couple of years ago, I discovered that Norfolk Dance holds classes for adult beginners.

So, around the same time as I started attending Slimming World, I began to do ballet at the age of 63 and have now been doing it for 2 years. And it is the most generation-mixing activity I've been involved in, for we have students ranging from in their teens and twenties through middle age to my sort of antiquity. And we are all passionate about it, and get on well.

Ballet is difficult, but the problems are perhaps more mental than physical, as it is much more of a struggle than it used to be trying to remember sequences of steps. But one does eventually progress, and while I'm clearly not going to make a career out of dancing at my age, I can still get a lot of satisfaction and sense of achievement from it. From one class a week at first, I've gone on to four or six a week as I've discovered more being put on and as I've gained in experience myself, able to attend classes at a variety of levels.


Many thanks to those who have commented on this post. To Popsie I reply that I could have actually danced on the stage of the Theatre Royal last March when the Heather Millan School of Dance put on their show and I was attending an adult ballet class there. In the event I refrained as I thought I lacked sufficient experience, but that's not to say this may not happen at some future date! I got my energy by losing weight and taking 3 or 4 years of fitness classes before starting ballet.

I'd urge Lady Jayne to take up ballet again. It's now possible for adults to do ballet - look out especially for the leaflet of Norfolk Dance for the Spring Term and book in Nov./Dec., whenever booking opens. There's a mix of teenagers to 60-year-olds in our classes.

I agree with Annie and her blog that there are always interesting things to do.