Eighteen months ago Katherine Moore was in such a bad place she vowed to take her own life.
But seeing the determination of cowboys riding bulls in Las Vegas made her give herself one more chance to find peace.
She signed up with a personal trainer in a bid to improve both her mental and physical health.
Now she has not only dropped almost a third of her body weight she has also found a new positivity which has made her determined to live life to the full.
Engineer Katherine, 36, from Manchester says: “If you are in a bad place you just want it to be over.
(Image: Katherine Moore)
“But you can change it and you can get better. Training really helped me.
“I could see that I was losing weight, I could see that I could life heavier weights than I had before.
“It makes you feel more capable in one little area and it gives you that chink of light that you need. It shows you that you are not totally useless at everything all the time and then you can expand that to other bits and pieces of your life.”
Katherine had had a tough relationship with her mum and had been struggling with her mental health for some time.
But she hit rock bottom when her mum died suddenly and she split from her boyfriend. Then her GP changed her medication and the side-effects were she lost her hair and put on a lot of weight.
She booked a holiday to Las Vegas – and gave herself a devastating ultimatum.
“I kind of got myself to the point in my head where if things don’t get better after the holiday then I am going to end it all,” she says.
“I was at my lowest point then.”
(Image: Katherine Moore)
“But on holiday I went to see the professional bull riders.
“When you see these cowboys who are the toughest guys in the world and they never give up, it made me fell like well, if you give up then that’s it. But if you try, then you might get better.
“ I felt like I owed it to myself to have one last big push before I reach the end and give up..
I had to give it 100 per cent and not have any excuses, then if I still felt like that at the end of it then I would know I had made the right decision. But it would be stupid to do that if I hadn’t tried everything.”
On her return she got the GP to change her medication and signed up with Ultimate Performance gym in Manchester – where she was assigned a personal trainer.
(Image: Katherine Moore)
It was the push she needed to get her life back.
“I had been to the gym before, but I felt that with the headspace I was in that having a personal trainer would make me accountable. I
“If you go to the gym by yourself it is very easy to make excuses – I feel bad today, I don’t want to go, or it is raining.
“If you have a PT there are no excuses – you feel bad that you are going to waste somebody else’s time.
“I wasn’t happy with the way that I looked, but losing weight wasn’t my primary reason for going, it was the hope that it would help my state of mind.”
Within nine months Katherine had dropped from 90kg to just 62kg, and had a new-found positivity that made life seem so much better.
She did a combination of weight training with her PT, and cardio on her own.
And Ultimate Performance also transformed her diet, making her ditch the beer and takeaways in favour of a low-carb high-protein regime with lots of green veg.
(Image: Katherine Moore)
She says: “My trainer gave me a meal plan which at the start was just protein and green veg – no carbs, no dairy.
“As I started to see results then that was adjusted so quantities would go up and they added in wholemeal pasta or brown rice.
“Before I used to eat a lot of takeaway and beers. I was always the person who ordered a burger with extra cheese and extra bacon.
“It is unrealistic to think you are never going to have a doughnut or a slice of cake – if it is someone’s birthday you don’t want to be the person ordering salad when everyone else is eating cake.
“But if you do pig out you are going to see the effects a couple of days later on the scales. You have got to be honest with yourself.
“I am definitely a lot stronger now. But it is one of those things where you are never done.
“If you have a history of depression there are always going to be times that are difficult.
“Christmas is hard for me because both of my parents are gone and it is a family time of year.
“But mental health is like maintaining a house – there are always little bits to be done.”
