'I thought I had a brain tumour': Mystery condition leads to blindness and partial paralysis
By Jo Abi|
It wasn't until Amanda Tickle and husband Jon returned from a Queensland holiday that they realised their clothes felt a bit tight.
"We just ate our way through Broadbeach?," Amanda, 39, from Sydney tells 9Honey.
"We got back from holiday and looked at our photos and we were like, 'Oh my God,' and our clothes didn't fit and it was just horrible."
It didn't help that Tickle was also dealing with a chronic health condition that didn't give her much wiggle room when it came to her health.
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At first, she thought she had a brain tumour.
"I had optic neuritis [loss of vision] in my right eye, and then I had numbness in my left leg and my left arm," she recalls. ?
She was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) in 2007 at the age of 23 and has been living with it for 17 years.
With the MS came crippling fatigue, and her weight gain made her feel worse.
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"I was just too heavy, so just walking places was fatiguing me out. ?So I was giving myself additional fatigue for no reason at all," she says.
Tickle's health was pretty much in check when she met Jon in 2019, and with her new relationship came plenty of dates that involved meals.
?"Then we got married. We lost a bit of weight for our wedding and then it was like, 'Oh we're married, we, so back to eating.'"
Tickle admits she's always been "sort of up and down" with her height, and standing at just 5' 1" she's always ended up at the "heavier side."
"I've always sort of been around that 60-70 kilo mark, so when I got up to nearly 95 kilos, that was quite huge for me."
The pandemic didn't help with her efforts to maintain a health weight, nor did her MS treatment.
"I had a stem cell transplant in April 2021, and I put on a bit of weight off the back of that," she explains.
"I'd lost weight, then I put weight on as I was recovering, and I sort of got to the point where I'm like, 'I feel better, but I look like crap'.?"
Looking back, Tickle blames large portion sizes for her struggles, as well as "lots of pub meals and fine dining and pasta meals."
"It would be like three courses," she says. And they never said no to dessert.
When they ate at home, the couple cooked reasonably health meals but Tickle would find herself eating the same portion size as her husband.
It was her idea to do Lite n' Easy. Jon was a bit "hesitant" at first.
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"I told him I couldn't do it on my own because if he was going to cook meals and I was trying to lose weight it just wasn't going to work," she says.?
Lite n' Easy provides all meals and snacks within different calorie ranges. She admits it was difficult at first. Not only did they struggle to adjust to eating less, they had also lost their main social activity of eating out together.
Getting their Finnish Lapphund Nora proved to be the perfect solution.
?"So I had to stay home a bit more looking after the dog and we walk the dog every morning," she says.
When they did eat out, they tried to make better choices.
"Instead of going out for lunch. we'd go out for maybe morning tea or afternoon tea and just get a coffee, or we'd order something small."
Once they settled into their new routine, both their weights began steadily decreasing.
"I could never go back to the way I was eating before," she admits.
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Over the festive season, she and Jon decided to indulge for two weeks and found themselves craving their healthier lifestyles.?
"It was all too much," she says. "It was delicious, we just couldn't eat like we used to."
Lite n' Easy taught them about eating smaller portions but also that it's okay to eat pasta and bread.
"?They're obviously made in a different way and it's a bit healthier for you, but to be able to eat sort of cheat food it felt like, and still lose weight, like it was great," she says.
She also found they were eating more vegetables than previously.
While, for them, the cost of the program is similar to what the couple would spend on food previously, Tickle said there is "no more food wastage."?
"I think the most important thing is I've got more energy back and its taken away that weight issue so now I can focus on other things," she says.
