“I’d written myself off at 50” – How Emma lost 32kg after a double hip replacement
Emma was 50 and felt like her health was falling apart.
Going through perimenopause had caused her bone density to drop. MRI scans showed she needed urgent surgery to replace both hips.
Her surgeon couldn’t believe she had been walking on them.
What followed was painful recovery – a wheelchair, then zimmer frame, and crutches – learning how to walk again.
“I’d written myself off at 50. I was in a really bad physical and mental state”
At a midlife crossroads, she walked through the doors of Ultimate Performance.
In 58 weeks, Emma lost 32kg (70lbs), rebuilt her strength from the ground up, and reclaimed the identity she thought she’d lost forever.
Here’s her story.
Emma, can you tell us what was happening in your life before you joined Ultimate Performance?
“I had a number of health challenges. I was diagnosed with an underactive thyroid. I moved into perimenopause, and then my bone density was decreasing, falling off a cliff, and so I had a number of scans that then said I needed two hip replacements.
So, I went to the surgeon to find out how quickly I would need to remedy the hips, and I had an MRI on a Friday afternoon. And the surgeon couldn't believe that I've been walking on those hips for as long as I had, and said, I need to see you at the first available appointment, which was the Tuesday the following week.
So I had 3 days and I had to make a decision on whether I would do one hip at a time or both at the same time, and I decided to do both because it would mean I would be in a wheelchair for less time. So I got the scan on Friday afternoon, Tuesday morning at 5 a.m. I was in for surgery to get both hips replaced at the same time.”
What impact did that have on your body and your confidence?
“I hadn't really properly moved for two years before the surgery. And then once I had the surgery, I had to learn how to walk again. So it went from standing to using a zimmer frame to having two crutches and one crutch, and I was in a wheelchair for most of that time, and that took about 6 months. So for two and a half years I hadn't really moved much.
And that meant that my weight had massively increased. I went up to almost 90kg and was at a point where I needed an intervention because my health was so bad.”
“I have to be honest, I'd probably kind of written myself off a little bit before I came here (U.P.). I didn't really think that I would get better. And I got to that kind of midlife stage which everyone gets to, and you have to make a decision, are you going to take the path where you're going to challenge yourself and get better, or are you going to accept all of those things?”
What made you decide to give Ultimate Performance a try?
“My husband recommended that I come to Ultimate Performance because he'd used them previously. And even though I was unconvinced, because I kind of felt like it was a little bit more geared towards people that wanted to look good rather than rehabilitation, I said to him, I'll give it 3 months, and I did the first 3 months, and I was completely sold. I dropped half of the target 30kg in the first 3 months, so I dropped 15kg and then came back in the January and signed up for a year.”
You’ve spoken about being in a fragile place mentally as well as physically. What was that like?
“I was in a really bad physical and mental state. And so I needed to be somewhere that I felt confidence that the person would understand the fragile state I was in, not just physically but mentally. I was really scared of falling, and even doing a split squat.
“The first 3 months, I had to learn to trust my trainer. I wouldn't let him be more than 5 inches away from me so that they could catch me if I fell, if I was doing the sled or trying any of the other exercises.
“And I just built up that trust that not only would they be there in a physical way, they also understood me mentally like the pace that I needed to go when things were going too fast or too slow. And yeah, I just built up a relationship with my PT that convinced me that I wanted to stay.”
What made the experience different from anything you’d tried before?
“The most enjoyable thing about Ultimate Performance is it completely matches my mindset. It's all about accountability. You can't hide, you shouldn't hide, you're doing it for yourself. You've got targets. The targets that are set are mutual, so, you know, there might be weight targets, circumference targets, body fat percentage targets, but I also have personal targets of I wanted to climb a tree with my son again. I wanted to be active, I wanted to be outdoors. I wanted to feel good, and my PT was always really helpful in understanding that I needed those goals as well.”
“My trainer goes above and beyond every single day. I am quite obsessive as a personality. He gets a picture every time I go on a machine in the gym. He gets all the stats of what I'm doing and always comes back with encouraging comments like ‘keep going, 1% makes all the difference!’ He's there every single day to support me, so he goes above and beyond.”
What were some of the biggest challenges during your transformation?
“The challenges were that sometimes I didn't know when to stop. And so my trainer would say, ‘you're trying to do too much’. I'd started to join the gym outside on the alternate days. I was doing too much cardio because I was really desperate to get back to run. And then I overdid it and I pulled a muscle in my bum.
So I've definitely had setbacks and challenges, but it's been part of the journey to learn that you can't just slam everything out, you have to go a good pace and not injure yourself.”
You set yourself a very specific goal linked to your surgery. Can you tell us about that?
“My personal milestones when I started, where the surgeon had said that my hips would have a guarantee of 30 years. And so I wanted to lose 30kg, which was a third of my body weight, and I've now lost 32kg.”
“But the other objectives that I had were not necessarily numbers driven. For example, I wanted to climb a tree with my son again and I've just come back from a holiday and done that. And it was magical, just being able to not have to worry about the physical challenges of the stretching and the climbing and the strength that you need to hang on and do that and have that moment and that memory with your family.”
“And also, actually, I wanted to do a pull-up with my son and I did that on holiday as well.”
How has this transformation affected your life outside the gym?
“The training has been noticed by everyone, obviously, so from a work and kind of private life, people have been really supportive and just really glad to see me come back as my original self because the journey to get here, as I've mentioned, was two and a half years long. And you just go on this kind of steady decline, and you don't really notice. So when people saw that I was coming out of that and starting to get back to the Emma that was, it's just been amazing. Everybody feels that they've got their sister, their wife, their mother. Their friends back.”
Where do you think you’d be if you hadn’t walked through the doors?
“Oh God, I don't even want to think about where I might be if I hadn't come here. I think that I was on the point of writing myself off. I genuinely felt that I tried everything. I've been a gym member my entire life, and I've done every single kind of sport, every kind of fitness approach, and nothing was working. So, yeah, I just feel super blessed that I found this.”
Would you recommend Ultimate Performance to others in a similar situation?
“I would absolutely recommend Ultimate Performance to other people, but possibly not for the reasons that they would originally think, which is just to get super fit. I actually think it does really work for rehabilitation as well. It absolutely keeps you accountable, takes into consideration the bespoke attention that you need when you've done something quite serious to your body, like a double hip replacement.
So I would encourage everyone to come in and try it, know that it's not going to be one of those places where you're there to socialise or have a sauna, you're gonna work out, but you're gonna get results.”
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