Mytime Active Stories - Susan
From a chance chat in a GP waiting room to weekly personal training, Susan’s journey with the Bromley Wellbeing Hub and Mytime Active shows how far small nudges can take you.
For Susan (67 from Bromley), the turning point that started her on the journey to better health wasn’t a New Year’s resolution or a health scare – it was an ordinary trip to the GP with her husband. Dysart Surgery had just moved into the Bromley Health & Wellbeing Centre and, while they were waiting to be seen, Susan and her husband were approached by Chris, a Mytime Active Lifestyle Advisor, who offered them both a Vital 5 health check. “He asked if we’d like to have an assessment,” Susan recalls. “When we agreed, he took our blood pressures and all of that, and told us about these group sessions called Lifestyle Medicine – all about healthy lifestyles and how to look after your health.”
It came at just the right moment. “I’m overweight, I’ve got high blood pressure, I’ve got Type 2 diabetes, I ticked every box going!” says Susan. “I’d had Type 2 diabetes for 18 months but hadn’t quite found the courage to change, mostly because of fear of the unknown. Lifestyle Medicine gave me the push I needed.”
Susan and her husband went along to several of the free Lifestyle Medicine workshops in the new Wellbeing Hub, which were delivered by the Mytime Active Lifestyle Advisor Luis. After attending the workshops, Susan asked her GP about being referred onto Fresh Start, Mytime Active’s exercise referral programme, and began six weeks of supervised exercise sessions at the Pavilion Leisure Centre. “I would never have joined Fresh Start without that initial Vital 5 health check, the Lifestyle Medicine sessions and Luis’s encouragement; it was the start of a real change for me. I liked that, at every session, there would always be somebody there, just keeping an eye on us,” she says. “More of an eye than if I just went randomly, which felt very reassuring.”
Building strength, building confidence
Once she had completed the Fresh Start programme, Susan took out a Mytime ActiveHealth membership – unlocking classes not open to every member, including a Saturday Tai Chi class she now loves. “It’s so popular that about three minutes after bookings open, all the slots are gone!” she says.
Following a recent osteopenia diagnosis, Susan has started to focus on weight training. “It’s really scary when you’re told your bones are crumbling,” she says. “I wasn’t confident to start using weights on my own, so I have started to have weekly sessions with a personal trainer Kinga (pictured together in gym selfie!). She is putting together a structured programme for me so I can do more on my own; we’re so on the same page, it’s incredible, really.”
The numbers back up how Susan feels. Her HbA1c reading – a key measure for diabetes – dropped from 65 in January to 45 within months, and she says she’s gone from being a self-confessed ‘couch potato’ to someone who loves her regular personal training and group exercise classes, and has lost weight.
Beyond the scales, it’s the everyday moments where Susan has really seen a change: walking downstairs with more confidence, no longer needing to hold the handrail getting off the train. “It’s funny little things that nobody would really notice, but they make all the difference to how I feel day-to-day,” she says. “There is satisfaction in knowing this is just for me. All your adult life everybody else comes before you; now I’m at a stage where actually, the person that comes first is me.”