How I lost four stone, my visceral tummy fat and kickstarted my stagnant metabolism with this bone broth diet. The collagen effects have been incredible – and now I’m dating a man ten years younger

The moment I knew something had to change is etched in my mind. It was 2020 and I was due to chair a meeting in London but couldn’t fit into any of my smartest clothes. I went to the Harrods sale and ended up buying a new jacket in a long length to conceal bulges.

To my disbelief, I could only fit into a size 22.

Around this time, I developed high blood pressure and was referred to a cardiologist. His letter to my GP began: ‘Thank you for referring this obese 60-year-old woman.’ Obese? I was mortified, but of course that’s exactly what I was.

I looked bloated, exhausted, frazzled and menopausal. I remember thinking, if I do not do something about this, I will die.

The irony is that I had spent 30 years helping other people get healthy. I was a doctor, a medical nutritionist, an award-winning author and a columnist. Yet despite all that knowledge, I had piled on the pounds until I was four stone overweight. I felt ashamed and confused. I was eating very little, or so I told myself, and yet I could not shift the weight.

Part of it was hormonal due to menopause and stress and the effects of cortisol. Most of it was lack of activity and eating too much at the wrong times.

I didn’t exercise because I was working more than 80 hours a week as a doctor and writer and I always found an excuse not to. I never had more than coffee for breakfast because I didn’t feel hungry, but I was also eating late in the evenings.

I knew it was wrong, but my lifestyle was out of control.

In fact, about this time, I stopped seeing patients individually because I felt like such a fraud. How could I give diet and nutrition advice when I was categorised as obese? Instead, I holed up in my study, writing to pay the bills. I was the main earner, so I had no choice but to keep going.

To tell the truth, my marriage of almost 25 years was over, although I did not want to accept that at the time. We didn’t row, we just didn’t have the important conversations. My sex drive was non-existent, I was exhausted, and I had lost my once bubbly personality.

Indeed, in 2021, I discovered my husband was having an affair. At the time I was devastated, although I should not have been surprised. Maybe it was his way of ending our marriage? Or he was looking elsewhere for what he wasn’t getting at home…

So many high-achieving women in midlife find themselves in exactly this position, gaining weight at menopause and so busy with our careers and families we don’t find time for ourselves.

Menopause lowers oestrogen and progesterone and this changes how your body stores fat, shifting it from the hips and thighs to the abdomen. Visceral fat, the deep abdominal fat that causes the ‘menopot’ belly, is more metabolically active and more dangerous to health.

All of this makes it much harder to lose weight even with dieting and exercising.

For me, it was clear that willpower was not the issue. Biology was. If I was going to lose weight, as I so desperately wanted, I had to work with my body rather than against it.

I admit my initial approach was somewhat unusual. I began researching countries where people seem to be much healthier than us. Japan stood out at once. Obesity affects around 5 per cent of Japanese people compared with roughly a quarter of us in the UK. Yet many work long hours and do not necessarily spend much time in gyms. That made me curious about what they were doing differently.

In Japan, broths have been part of the culinary tradition for centuries. They form the base of many everyday dishes from miso soups to slow-simmered stews and noodle dishes. You naturally find bone broth at almost every meal. I thought it was a tradition worth emulating.

So in early 2021, I began drinking bone broth every day. I started by freezing leftover chicken bones from roasts and boiling them up with garden herbs and vegetables to make a tasty broth just like my granny used to make. I loved it. It was so full of gelatine that when it cooled it solidified. I drank this in the morning and at lunchtime. I called my broth the holy grail because it delivered so many benefits in such a simple form. It’s naturally rich in collagen, the main structural protein in the body, forming the glue that holds together tendons, ligaments, cartilage, bones, blood vessels, skin and the gut.

This has powerful implications for midlife women. During the first five years after menopause, skin collagen content can fall by as much as 30 per cent. As collagen declines, skin loses resilience, elasticity and hydration. Studies show that when women with visible signs of ageing took a collagen source for 12 weeks, wrinkle scores fell by 35 per cent and cheek skin elasticity increased by 20 per cent, alongside improvements in hydration and radiance.

Bone broth also contains amino acids, which support many different aspects of health, supporting skin, joints and digestion. My IBS symptoms quickly disappeared.

It also provides high-quality protein in a way that’s easy to absorb. Alongside the broth, I focused on eating homemade vegetable soups, salads, vegetables and lean proteins. The broth was so filling I only needed fruit or hummus and vegetable sticks as snacks until my evening meal, which was usually fish, chicken breast or a steak with salad, drizzled with olive oil and apple cider vinegar.

My portions could be smaller because thanks to all that broth, I was much less hungry. Bone broth is naturally low in calories yet surprisingly filling because it contains at least 10g of protein per serving. Digesting protein consumes more energy which helps both to kickstart the metabolism and protect your metabolic rate, which can otherwise fall while you’re dieting if you lose muscle mass along with fat.

I also found long-term studies consistently showing that daily consumption of extra virgin olive oil increases your chance of living a long and healthy life, reducing your risk of coronary heart disease, stroke and the risk of developing dementia.

You might assume that drinking olive oil – high in fat – would increase your waistline but, paradoxically, in moderate amounts, the opposite is true.

In one study women were asked to add roughly a tablespoon of either extra virgin olive oil or soybean oil at breakfast every day while following a low-calorie diet. Those taking the olive oil saw 80 per cent more fat loss.

Convinced, I started adding a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil to my mug of bone broth.

I began to lose weight slowly and safely – around a kilogram (2.2lbs) a week. Within a month my skin was firmer and had a healthy glow. I had more energy. Within three months, my hair thinning had reduced so I could no longer see my scalp through my hair at the front. My hair was glossy and silkier. My knees were no longer aching, which I attribute to the collagen in bone broth and the effects of olive oil.

By the end of 2021 I felt confident enough to join a gym. I run 5km on the elliptical or cross trainer and do weight training on resistance machines. At the start I went five or six days a week as I was building my fitness from scratch. Now, I maintain my results by going three times a week.

My weight loss continued over two years, reaching my goal of ten-and-a-half stone in 2023. I have now maintained that weight for more than two years and still drink bone broth every day.

While researching the best bone broth to start my weight-loss journey, I was so frustrated by the many substandard products out there, I helped formulate my own: Aeons Nature’s Gift Bone Broth. It comes in convenient sachets of powder to which you simply add boiling water. I drink mine every morning after a cold-water sea swim, but you can also use it as a savoury, nutritious base for soups and casseroles. For me, bone broth is not a fad but a return to a traditional, nutrient-dense foods that deliver measurable benefits at every stage of midlife and beyond.

People might wonder why I didn’t just go for a quick fix with weight-loss injections. At the time I started to lose weight, they were reserved for people who were clinically obese with several associated health risks such as type 2 diabetes, which I didn’t have.

But it’s not just that. I do not believe weight-loss jabs have been used long enough yet to identify long-term health issues. And while they’ve undoubtedly helped a lot of people when used under medical supervision, I am concerned about what will happen when treatment is stopped. Recent research has shown that the weight just piles back on.

Healing my body helped heal my confidence. By 2023, having gone from fat, bloated and unhappy to slimmer and divorced, I felt confident enough to start dating again.

In 2024, I met a wonderful man, Tony. After our first date, I thought I’d never see him again – he seemed way too gorgeous for me. But he proposed on our fourth date and we married within a year, last July. I have never been happier. I am now 67 and he is 59 but age is only a number. It is how you feel and act that counts.

Recently, someone I had not met for many years said I looked ten years younger than when she had last seen me, ten years ago. And, when skiing over Christmas, I was stopped at a lift gate and challenged as to why I was using an over 60s pass. I was 67 the next day and the lift attendant thought I was in my 40s because I had no ‘face creases’. It was a happy moment. Tony could not stop laughing.

Medicine has tended to treat excess weight as something that can be tackled simply by counting calories. My personal journey has reinforced for me that the body handles calories from protein differently to calories from carbohydrates and fat. Midlife weight gain carries an enormous emotional toll but when you nourish your body properly at a cellular level and create small consistent habits, change is possible. With the help of bone broth, I did not just lose four stone. I regained my health, my confidence and my happiness.

As told to Leah Hardy. Visit aeons.co.uk