After 11 years, Susan Shannon gave up her radio job to set up her own weight- loss programme, and she's never been happier, she tells Michelle McDonagh.
Having been a compulsive dieter for years, Susan Shannon is all too aware of how complicated and emotive the whole issue of overeating and weight loss is.
After trying almost every diet out there, and teaching classes for a well-known weight-loss company for five years, Shannon began to realise that there was something missing, particularly as she inevitably piled back on the pounds she had shed.
She spent a year developing her own weight-loss programme, Simply Weight Loss, which she stresses "is not a diet" but a way of helping people to get to their ideal weight by addressing the cause of their over-eating.
"I am so passionate about helping people who are overweight to lose weight. If you ask a woman who is really overweight which would make her happiest, being her ideal weight or winning the European Lotto, most likely she will choose losing the weight," Shannon comments.
Born in Cork, Shannon moved to Dublin with her family in her early teens. From an early age, she knew she wanted to pursue a career in radio or television and, after finishing school, she studied radio and journalism at Harcourt Street in Dublin.
She gained experience with a community radio station in Dublin before moving to local radio station Galway Bay FM, where she had her own night-time show. Last December, Shannon hung up her microphone after 11 years to concentrate fully on her new business.
She set up Simply Weight Loss in March 2006 and continued to work as a DJ for nine months, commuting from Newcastle West in Limerick to Galway every night for her show. Although she loved radio, she realised that her real passion in life was helping people to lose weight and once she was confident that her new business was financially viable, she decided to leave the radio station.
"I haven't really had time to miss radio. It was something I was very careful to let go of, as radio was one of my big passions. I studied it in college and spent almost 11 years working as a late-night presenter. It was a different decision, there's no doubt about it, but it wasn't taxing me."
Helping people to feel good about themselves and their bodies is proving to be a far more fulfilling job for her, says Shannon. She has been running her eight-week Simply Weight Loss programme in Galway since last April and will be starting in Limerick this year and Cork in the near future. She also gives sessions in the privacy of people's homes, for instance, to a big family or a group of female friends who do not want to go into a group setting.
Since December, Shannon has also been working with medical herbalist Dr Dilis Clare in Galway, providing weight-loss advice to clients in her Galway clinic on a one-to-one basis.
From being a very strict yo-yo dieter who obsessed over every calorie she consumed, Shannon has a much healthier attitude to food these days and doesn't even have a weighing scales in her house. It's not about being a certain weight, she explains, it's about losing excess body fat
"I work with the nutritional value of food and how it benefits the body, as opposed to its calorific content. People think if they eat less, they will weigh less, but a lot of the time they are losing muscle. For a diet company to congratulate a client for losing seven pounds in weight and not know if they have lost muscle, fat or water is absolutely frightening. If they are losing muscle, it will slow their metabolism and their body fat will actually increase," she explains.
Women are going to extraordinary lengths to lose weight and Shannon believes a lot of their problems stem from decades of dieting.
She points out: "Having surgery will make your stomach smaller so it doesn't take so much food to fill it, but it will not address why you were overeating in the first place. Women are doing anything to lose weight except address the causes of their behaviour."
Now living in Ardagh, Co Limerick with her partner, Ian, Shannon says she's never been happier since she took the plunge and left radio. She commutes two days a week to Galway for her weight-loss classes, staying overnight there with a close friend.
She is also studying Nutritional Health at the Irish Institute of Nutritional Health at the University of Limerick this year and is looking forward to having a family member close by, as her father, William, is returning from abroad to take up a post as director of education at the new medical school at UL.
These days, Shannon also has more time to indulge in her favourite pastimes of walking in the country with her beloved golden retriever, reading and listening to music, which will always be a very important part of her life.
She remarks: "I often read articles about people who succeeded in life and the one thing they had in common is that they all worked really, really hard. I never did that in radio but when you are doing what you really love, you don't mind if clients are ringing you day and night. Weight loss is so emotive for them, it can be very draining work, but it's a positive draining."