Meg Gibson transformed her life through cycling and a healthier diet. Photo / News.com.au
Shae Tye used to hate exercise.
She would do anything to avoid breaking a sweat — like parking her car as close as possible to the shopping centre entrance — and hadn't ever really worked out.
"I never moved. I was so lazy and I just ate and ate," Shae told news.com.au.
Shae weighed 90kg and hated having her picture taken. She was so shy that she'd hide behind friends and family in photos.
At 39, she gave herself an ultimatum: Get down to 65kg before her 40th birthday.
"The weight just crept up on me and I would look in the mirror and rub my rolls of fat and think, 'This is awful,'" Shae said.
"My husband said, 'I still love you as you are,' but I just snapped. Both my parents have had triple bypasses, so I'm a target for heart disease. I said, 'I want to get back to my wedding weight and I've got a year to do it.'"
Shae started walking and then progressed to running, but the high impact exercise wasn't kind to her joints. So she bought a road bike.
"I joined an all-female 'how to ride' class for eight weeks and started making some great friends. I was hooked," Shae said.
Shae, now 42, clocks up around 200km a week and is obsessed with riding.
She shares her bike ride adventures with her 15,000 Instagram followers and has happily embraced the cliche of the bright, Lycra-clad weekend rider.
"I started buying the Lycra and now I've got 45 different outfits," she said.
"I'm so much more confident now. I always wear lipstick when I ride and I love taking photos. I'm part of a riding club and I now have so many girlfriends who I ride with.We really get each other," she said.
Now she absolutely loves exercising and has about 10kg more to go to hit her weight loss target.
"The endorphins from riding up a hill are addictive. As soon as you get to the top you forget about all that pain," she said.
"All the happy endorphins just overwhelm you and then you get to go down the hill and you feel like a dog with its head out the window, flying down at 50km/h."
Meg Gibson is another woman who transformed her health through cycling and a healthier diet.
The single mother-of-three has lost 40kg since 2015, when she weighed 120kg.
"For my entire life I have been overweight and had to buy clothes from the bigger section since I was 16. Now I can walk past any shop and try on any size," Meg said.
"My issue was that I ate too much. I've always eaten quite healthily, but even if I had steamed veggies, I would fill up an entire pasta bowl. I would have more food in one sitting than someone should consume in one day."
She's always cycled but now does it every day, cycling her kids the 2km from their house to daycare and school.
"Biking for us has become a family event. It's so much more fun to ride the bike than get in the car. You're buckling three kids into seatbelts verses putting on their helmets and getting them straight out the door," Meg said.
"The kids talk to me when we're on the bike. My middle child is five and she's learned to count by counting the houses."
Meg has also learned some simple tricks for keeping her portion sizes in check and not overeating.
"Now we eat off the side plates and smaller cereal bowls, not the big dinner plates and pasta bowls. If I'm still hungry I can go back and get more, but physically having to get more makes me think about what I'm doing.
"I put signs on the door of my pantry saying, 'How much do you really want this? Am I sitting at my goal weight? Am I on track?'
"I drink a litre of water in the hour before every meal, so I feel a bit fuller. And I don't eat my kids' scraps anymore.
"I'm not a swimsuit model, but I'm healthy and fit and I can chase after my kids. That's what's important."
Both Shae and Meg will be participating in Gear Up Girl next month, Sydney's largest all-female community bike ride, which will coincide with International Women's Day.
Gear Up Girl is run by Bicycle NSW and the Heart Foundation and is designed to encourage women to get exercising and reduce their risk of heart disease.
Heart disease kills three times more Australian women than breast cancer.
According to the 2017 Jean Hailes Woman's Health Survey, 60 per cent of Australian women are not getting the recommended amount of weekly exercise, putting their health at risk.
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