Diet |
July 29, 2017

Rosemary Conley

Rosemary Conley is one of the biggest names in the diet business
Rosemary’s business has included weight-loss classes, TV shows, videos and books, including her latest, The 3-2-1 Diet.

Rosemary, 70, still lives in her home county of Leicestershire with her second husband Mike and has one daughter and a grandson.

“I was brought up in a house with an acre of garden in the Leicestershire countryside. My father was a hosiery wholesaler and my mother invented a beauty cap to go over ladies’ hair curlers; both were entrepreneurial and that may be where I got my business sense from.

I left school at 15 for secretarial college and then worked in an office before becoming a Tupperware lady in 1970; I enjoyed this because I wasn’t afraid of standing up in front of a group of people and it kept me in good stead for my exercise classes, which came later.

It was also the time when I gained weight.

“After attending a good grooming course, I wanted to increase women’s self-esteem as they lost weight, so I started my own slimming and good grooming classes, which ran for eight years. I incorporated exercise into the classes and had consultants running them.

“It was regional to Leicestershire until a national publisher asked me to run them nationwide until 1985, when they closed the business.

Rosemary ConleyPH

‘I’m in a good place’

“My life was thrown into crisis in 1986: I’d had a failed marriage, a broken relationship, my business was closing and I was going to have to sell my house and find a job. I was also ill with gallstones.

“Things were looking pretty bleak; I felt so low that it felt like I was looking up through the bottom of my world. The turning point came when I was in hospital and discovered the book Power For Living.

“I read it and knelt at my bedside and invited the Lord in to my life. I felt that God had taken command of my life and was saying, ‘Don’t worry, I will look after you.

Trust and follow me.’ Everything changed from that moment on:

I’d met Mike on a pony trekking holiday three years before and four months later we got married; I didn’t have to sell my house and my book, The Hip And Thigh Diet, was emerging.

I was on a whole new path.

The best TV for 2017

Top of the Lake BBC Two, late July/early August - Four long years after the first series aired, this eerie cop drama from Australian director Jane Campion returns

BBC

Top of the Lake BBC Two, late July/early August – Four long years after the first series aired, this eerie cop drama from Australian director Jane Campion returns

“The book was published in 1988 and sales topped two million. I did book tours worldwide. I then launched The Rosemary Conley Diet and Fitness Clubs as a franchise in 1993.

“It was a successful business, but then the world changed and the internet became more prominent. The company went into administration in 2013.

“I jumped at the chance to do Dancing On Ice in 2012, but it took four auditions to get through. Although I was 65, I had the most wonderful partner in Mark Hanretty, who I still skate with.

“Now, I’m part of Rosemary Conley Online, which has eating plans, recipes, exercises and dieting advice. I’m also writing my autobiography. I’m in a good place; it will be a happy, positive read.”

[“Source-express”]