Cindy's Diary

I've agreed to do this because I know there are thousands of women like me who have lost weight time and again, then put it all back on again. I'm sick of stories that make dieting look easy. I want people to appreciate how hard it is being big and trying to lose the weight...

– Fashion retailer Cindy Gibbons on her reasons for being in a documentary about her weight loss journey

Yeah I remember. I also remember that I started doing it, too.

– Cindy's daughter Michelle on how watching her Mum try so many diets affected her

I think there is a huge expectation out there that people will expect Cindy to be miraculously...you know, everybody's looking for something magical and we know there is no magic.

– Nutritionist Jeni Pearce on the boring reality of losing weight and keeping it off

You're actually being very clever because the latest evidence suggests that what you're doing is exactly the right thing.

– Obesity expert Philip James applauds Cindy's long term approach to losing her weight

Food is not like alcohol and smoking: you can give those up and that's a real good health benefit, but you have to eat food three times a day, seven days a week for the rest of your life, and it's something you have to actually work with...

– Nutritionist Jeni Pearce on the difficulty of keeping to a good diet when we need to eat to live

She's likely to be keen to please you, and she's going to try and work out what it is that would please you. If that's weight loss she'll try hard to lose weight but, it won't work because it's also true she's sick of spending her life pleasing people, so she'll also protest about that kind of way of living by not losing weight, and she'll blame herself before you'll ever hear there's a problem.

– Psychologist Hugh Clarkson offers his insights into Cindy's emotional drives at the start of her documented weight loss journey

It's really no joke being squashed in a seat like this. And to add insult to injury they give us extension belts that are bright red.

– Cindy on the reality of air travel when you can't comfortably fit in your seat

It's July and I'm frustrated. I want to lose weight quickly and I'm not. The anemia is making it harder, I'm always fighting the fatigue. I'm really starting to lose focus.

– Cindy on the difficulty of keeping to her new regime

Why did I agree to do this? Yeah I'm finding this really hard, seeing myself because all I can see is the weight, all I can see is the weight, I can't see anything else.

– Cindy struggles early on with seeing herself on-camera

The highly popular documentary, Cindy's Diary, was excruciatingly frank, showing Gibbons puffing away at the gym, struggling to manoeuvre on an aeroplane, and her doctor running a stretched-to-breaking-point tape measure round her size 30 stomach ..../ Gibbons' bravery in revealing her hardest moments of despair, pain and humiliation has endeared her to many women, who constantly approach her to share their own stories of lifelong struggles with weight loss.

– Excerpt from an interview with retailer and author Cindy Gibbons, The NZ Herald, 21 March 2002