Healthy & Happy

Hair supremo Sam King is glowing with good health, nine months after her long awaited gastric band operation. She talks to Carissa Casey about how the changes it brought have given her a whole new lease of life.

When we first met with Wicklow woman and former Operation Transformation leader Sam King last year, she had been through a spectacularly tough time. Having decided to go for gastric band surgery, her operation was delayed by more than a year due to the Covid pandemic. At that stage, she was diabetic, had high blood pressure and a battle with Covid had seen her hospitalised and ventilated.

Today, she’s beaming, with the vitality of a woman on top of her game. Always upbeat and confident, she now radiates a new found sense of wellbeing. Her diabetes is a thing of the past, her blood pressure is well under control, she’s a regular at the gym and enjoys nothing better than going for long walks with her husband on Brittas beach.

“It’s something I couldn’t have done before,” she says of her walks. “I’d never have been able to climb over the sand dunes and just enjoy the beauty of it all. I know now why people love walking.”

Nine months after the gastric band surgery, she’s lost an incredible 12 stone, but the weight loss journey hasn’t been all smooth. The operation itself is relatively short, she tells me. The equivalent of having your gallbladder removed. “It's not a mega procedure. I had keyhole surgery so I have tiny little incisions. You'd barely even see them,” she says. Afterwards, her stomach was the size of a small egg, but like any muscle it expands with use.

“Immediately after the operation I didn’t feel great, but with every hour I started to feel better.”

Then the real work began. “You have to mind that little egg and put the correct food in. An issue after the surgery is mal-absorption of nutrients, so I have to supplement for life. But look, I'd rather supplement than be on a pen for insulin,” she says.

She also needed to be careful not to eat too much or too fast, or she'd be sick. It's not so much of an issue now that she's used to smaller portions. What she puts into her body has also changed. “You have to focus on protein because you need that to feed your heart, your lungs and all your muscles. Carbohydrates are not as important and I also felt that they were triggers for me.”

She credits her surgeon Helen Heneghan at St Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin with getting her into the right frame of mind before the surgery. “At my first appointment, she's like, ‘look, this isn't your fault’. And that's the first time that anyone ever said that to me. You’re going in there hating yourself, you're disappointing yourself. And she's like, ‘I got you. Don't worry’.”

In advance of the operation, she was advised to take it easy and spend time thinking about the change ahead, which is exactly what she did. “I was just kind of making sure I'm okay with this, that I have support around me. If things weren’t great, who do I go to? You know I really thought of those things.”

But regardless of all the preparation, she still felt shocked after the surgery at the extent of the change that had taken place.

"Oh my God, I remember I was standing in a room on my own thinking like, ‘how do I navigate this from here?’.

There's no handbook. It's just like, ‘here's the guidelines, try to stick with them’.”

In the early days, Sam couldn’t eat more than half an egg and it helped that she felt satisfied with that small amount.

Then she saw the weight coming off. “That feeling was like euphoria,” she says. “Like my previous experiences - I'd gone to slimming clubs – you know, I was playing with that same stone forever.

So, can you imagine when I see a whole stone come off? And then another stone? I've done that 11 times, nearly 12.”

Despite that euphoria, Sam was clear in her own mind that her main goal was to be healthier.

“I was obsessed with my health. My mother died when I was very small. She was very young. And that really started to play on my mind. I am getting to the age she was at. And you know in my head, that was catastrophic.”

She credits a “rock solid’ support network for getting her through those first few months and even beyond. Her husband lost three stone alongside her, stocking up the fridge with healthy proteins and ensuring temptation didn’t sneak into the house. The girls at work were similarly supportive.

“Even my dad, who's, like, in his 70s, he would be old school. When I said to him, ‘look, I want to go and do this’, I thought he would be like, ‘oh Jesus no’. But he said, ‘I don't mind. You just be safe. Make sure that the surgeon is good and I'll support you whatever you need’. And he’s been thereevery step of the way. And he's saying, ‘is that a new dress?’"

Always glamorous, Sam is now rocking ontrend Zara numbers and sharing them on Instagram where she has more than 10,000 followers, a number of them struggling with obesity, as she once did and taking courage from her openness and honesty.

“I just had to put my hand up and say, ‘lads this is something that I'm struggling with’. I do think it's like any addiction, you know. I think it gets a little bit less forgiveness, because some people think ‘oh well, just stop eating and start moving’.

But it's a lot more complex,” she says. Whereas previously Sam had eaten big portions, she’s now discovered she’s a “tapas girl”. “I found I could have a little bit of what I fancied. And that satisfies me. I just want the taste, you know, I'd like a little taste of everything.”

A few months ago the weight loss began to slow, which is not that unusual. But for Sam it was a red flag. “So I did something that really terrified me and I reached out to some lad on the internet, a personal trainer basically and sent a message and he said, ‘come in this evening’."

By 6pm, Sam was already regretting her hastiness. “I was thinking ‘what have I done? Like my world is crashing around me. And when I went in, I just was like, ‘oh I feel like this place is not going to be for the likes of me’.”

Her trainer, Gary Dempsey at Match Fitness, Wicklow, reassured her. "Look, we're all just here for the same reason,” he said. So, despite her terror she signed up for a three-day a week, 12-week programme.

“Now, I'm actually more focused on the fitness than the weight loss. And I never really thought that would happen. I can suddenly start to see my shape changing. My husband said to me the other night, ‘the legs on you’. And I was like, ‘oh these things’,” she says, mimicking a red carpet twirl.

She’s now a committed gym-goer. “They're just honestly unreal and it's such a supportive environment,” she says. Side by side with this extraordinary journey, Sam also managed to double her business King Hair and Beauty (kinghairandbeauty.com - the miracle root touch up is a hero product of mine) and has big plans for the coming months. “I feel stronger mentally than I ever have done and I didn't even know that I wasn't before. I would've always considered myself quite a strong-minded person. If I wanted something, I kind of went after it. But now I go after it with conviction, you know, because I believe that I can have something if I really want it,” she says.

“But sometimes you have to ask for help. I couldn't do it alone." And what is the best thing about everything that has happened? Her health, she says without any hesitation. “Of all the things I've done with my business and all of those things that I'm very proud of, this is by far, the proudest achievement of my whole life. I will never, ever, stop waking up in the morning and being so grateful that I have this. I'll never not appreciate my health or damage it because it's so, so fragile."

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