The Story of BodySlims:
Building the Best Weight Loss Programme in the World
What would happen if you started a business without a business plan, without forward projections, and without any of the normal business ambitions? What if scalability and franchising potential were all ignored? Imagine if you put all your efforts into just making it the best weight loss program in the world and thought of nothing else. What would happen? This curiosity is what actually got us started, and what happened was BodySlims.
Many of you have asked about the history of BodySlims, and this is finally my chance to tell you the story. To give a little context, I had gone through the milestone of turning fifty in 2013 and in line with my plan, I have retired from all my business ventures. It had been a far easier decision than I had imagined it would be. Having gone through the financial crisis, I had become tired of looking for savings for the businesses, having to let great people go because of a lack of work took a toll. It was not a time I enjoyed, so walking away was a relief to be honest.
So with time on my hands and no financial pressure to have to work, I started to think of all the things I’d wanted to do – and starting another business was certainly not on my list.
Maybe I’d take up golf. Maybe I’d write, mentor startup businesses, or make myself available to talk more about my own recovery. Or maybe not. The truth was, I hadn’t given much thought to what I’d do next because, deep down, I didn’t believe I would actually walk away in the first place.
Now along with my business interests I had always had a keen interest in delivering courses around peak performance running courses mainly in London through the various speakers bureaus to help people empower themselves in whichever area of their life they chose to and it was Sharon who, having seen firsthand the results people were getting from my programmes, first raised the idea of starting a programme specifically for weight loss.
I was less than enthusiastic. Weight loss was an area I did not hold in high regard. I felt much of the thinking was flawed and out of date, and in all truth, I was worried about guilt by association. In my early life, my alcoholism meant my integrity was less than acceptable, and my word meant very little. In sobriety, I had managed to turn my life around. My word and integrity meant everything to me. But Sharon reversed the narrative and said, “If you don’t think it’s being done right, why don’t you do it the way you believe is right?” So, I agreed, with four caveats:
Firstly, I wanted the programme to be as attractive to men as women. Having lost my own father at ten years of age men's health has been a lifelong interest for me.
Secondly, I wanted it to be as affordable to as many people as possible.
Thirdly, I wanted it to be the best weight loss programme in the world not the most franchisable or scalable – just the best, full stop.
And to do that I knew I needed the last of the four caveats…
The foundations of the best weight loss programme
It had become apparent to me over the years that people could lose weight but kept putting it back on. Therefore, weight maintenance is a bigger challenge than weight loss. I wanted to build a programme built on the foundations of successful weight maintenance but with the tweaks needed to create weight loss.
To do this, I read up on many, many studies concerncing these topics to educate myself on the subject. And finally, I found the largest study in the world for successful weight maintenance: It was conducted in the US at Brown Medical School in Providence Rhode Island. The study followed over 10,000 participants who had successfully maintained their weight loss for five and a half years. The scientists also explored the behaviours of the people who had managed to do this.
With this revelation, Behavioural Science became the bedrock for BodySlims. The programme was structured in such a way that at the end of the ten weeks, when we cover weight maintenance, the participants are already practised in what they need to be doing going forward. Because of this, there’s less of a transition for people to continue to be successful.
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The early days of BodySlims
The first year and a half of BodySlims was just me at my kitchen table — planning, researching and studying the layout of the course, tweaking, and improving it, and remembering my own recovery and its challenges. The next step was planning to get ahead of these to make things as smooth as possible for the participants. What also helped was speaking to wonderful professionals in the medical and Sports Science arenas, who were very generous with their time.
We originally intended for a January launch but there were still things I wasn’t fully happy with so we held back until April. To give you context, January is the busiest time for weight loss, so from a business standpoint, January was the right time to launch… But I knew I needed to remain firm in the conviction of making it the best weight loss programme in the world. Falling short of this goal is not an option.
When April came around, we launched in two hotels – the Carlton in north Dublin and the Talbot Hotel in Stillorgan, located in south Dublin in small rooms with a small group of wonderful people. (Myself and Sharon had delivered leaflets door to door to try to get a few people.)
I can’t say it all went smoothly the first night. The sports scientist who was supposed to join us for the weigh in went to the wrong venue. The wooden floor we booked had disappeared, as if by magic. This was a huge problem as weighing scales do not work accurately on carpets. It was an hour before the first event and a sense of panic gripped us all…
Luckily, Sharon’s son Sean stepped up. He was still in school at the time but had come to help out by talking to the staff and finding movable wooden dance floors stored in the basement. In my memories of BodySlims, Sean’s sweaty but smiling face – having had to ascend all the stairs from the basement to the top floor, carrying eight one metre square wooden dance floor pieces – will always live in my memory.
It’s worth noting that Sean is now the Operations Manager of BodySlims while Tara, who was running the door that night, heads our BodySlims customer services. Austin, who was also there, is still working with us part-time. So along with myself and Sharon, that’s most of the people from that very first night of BodySlims still at the wheel. That’s something I’m very proud of.
A proven track record of weight loss results
As we went through this course, my accountants were pulling their hair out. They were looking at the figures (we were losing quite a bit of money) but I was looking at other figures: the weight loss results.
From the earliest moment, I knew we were on to something pretty special here. I’m a pretty optimistic guy but even I was blown away by the reception of our customers who had far more experience in terms of participating in weight loss programmes. They were raving about us.
I learned two important things from that first ten weeks. I understood the detrimental effects being overweight had on the body from a biological point of view but had no idea just how detrimental it was psychologically. The self esteem, the self worth, the self confidence – I learned of these by listening to the customers on our walks which we did with the groups three times a week. We used to do it at Saturday mornings at Howth pier, then Sundays at Dun Laoghaire pier, and Wednesday evenings along the Stillorgan dual carriageway.
It was out in Howth on a rainy Saturday morning that my second abiding memory was formed. Sharon had a plastic bag with her (why I don’t remember) but the resident seagulls decided she must have something they wanted. This resulted in Sharon getting swarmed by a flock of seagulls! I had no idea she could run that fast!
The other thing I learnt was how much I enjoyed it – I didn’t just like it, I loved it. It really brought me back to my own early days in recovery. I’ve always enjoyed helping people and had always been active in that space but this… This was fun and the results were amazing. The customers were thrilled and I was ecstatic.
We came back to the rooms for the September course. No leafleting this time but both rooms were full. How did we accomplish this? By word of mouth. Our amazing customers had told their friends and families of their experiences and results and they wanted some of it too.
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We had to make a hard decision about leaving our venue on the north side as we wanted to add extra resources such as a massive TV. Unfortunately, these resources weren’t transportable so we made Talbot Hotel Stillorgan our flagship venue on the basis they had the most flexibility in terms of growth with reception rooms.
And the BodySlims train just kept running down the track. That first room had the dividers taken down and it didn’t seem like we’d ever fill it but we did. We ended up in the biggest hotel ballroom in the southside of Dublin for two nights a week, standing room only.
We were turning away more people than we could take in. The word had spread and we had people travelling to Dublin from Kerry, Cork, Galway, Belfast, and all over Ireland. Our only promotion was the success stories of our past participants, the word of mouth on the basis of the results.
On one particular opening night, shortly before I was due to go onstage, the lovely manager Rafa said the police was in the lobby and they were looking to speak to me. After the initial shock, I went out to meet two lovely guys from the traffic core who wanted to know what was going on. As it turned out, the N11 road, the main gateway from the city centre to south Dublin, was gridlocked with people queuing to get into the venue.
Now bear in mind booking was done online so we had no spaces left. Despite this, people still came. And we even had the crazy situation of people selling their spot to people who so badly wanted to join.
The transition to an online weight loss system
Sharon had been on to me for quite a while about an online programme. Time and again, I had been reluctant. Would it be the same? Would it be as good? And these might have stopped me except for one thing…
With a weekly session and meetups to take walks together with participants, you only get anecdotal impressions of how someone is doing. However, you cannot know for sure. That’s what intrigued me. One person was getting a good result, the other a great result. What was the difference in their behaviours?
With an online system, we could map these behaviours and create a blueprint for success using behavioural science on our course participants. After a lot of searching, we found an IT company that shared our vision and found our project interesting. And so we started on the road to BodySlims online.
Truth be told, I wasn’t happy with our first online programme or more accurately, I wasn’t happy with me. The multiple camera angles and the production value were impressive, but I didn’t feel I was the way I’d be most effective. I had gone against my better judgement and made too many modifications to my presentation. The results were good for the small group on that first online programme but when I think back to how different it was to what we have now, it’s like different worlds.
For the second online programme, I did it my way – just one camera and me trying to connect to people at a real level. Not talking at people but talking to people. I went back to using the shanachi method, the old Irish form of storytelling, which means my words will stay in your head. I also added a daily morning and evening video. Though I was told to prep for this in terms of getting camera ready (the dress up would be too arduous to maintain), I said I’ll do it as I am, T-shirt, sweatshirt whatever. I firmly believe people would forgive my lack of sartorial elegance and see the bigger picture. I was just trying to do everything I could to help. How I looked was not the most important thing.
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Because of these defiant insistences to stay true to who I am, I was much happier with that second programme. I felt it was much more me. Then the results started to come in and it was mind blowing. We had hoped we’d be able to replicate the results from the rooms but now, with all the extra interactions online, we were clearly surpassing them.
Our customers loved the ease of use of the BodySlims app, where they found their food diary, videos, etc. always at hand. They felt that they were never alone on BodySlims online.
Most importantly, we were able to crunch the data and see the exact loss percentage based on starting body weight. Aside from this, we also saw what the most successful people were doing in terms of interacting with the system, how often they were doing it, and for how long. This allowed us to create the BodySlims blueprint for success following in the footsteps of those who’ve successfully finished the programme.
Hands up, we added things to the online portal we thought would be great that were not received well. On the other hand, we also added some features we were in two minds about, which became huge successes. It was more luck than genius, really.
So now we had two programmes running in tandem the two nights a week in the room (with the walks) and the online programme. This was probably the most difficult part of BodySlims for me personally as the demands became really hard. I was working from morning to night seven days a week but never getting on top of things. Despite the struggles, I still liked it.
We started our January 2020 with our hybrid programme of online and in the rooms. Like any other year, we were looking forward to the year ahead. And like everybody else, we had no idea just what was coming down the tracks.
By the eight week of the first programme, Ireland had gone into COVID lockdown. We couldn’t go back into the rooms and we couldn't even go into the office. This was definitely the hardest challenge BodySlims had faced. We had to migrate all the people from the rooms to the online programme for the last two weeks.
I will never forget the debt I owe the team, which was led by Sean and Tara. I’m not sure anyone actually got into bed for a full two weeks – It was absolutely crazy but they did it. I never had doubts about the dedication of the BodySlims team, but how they made that happen with the massive limitations in place, I remain in awe.
Becoming the best online weight loss programme
So from April 2020, we fully transitioned to the online programme. BodySlims online was one of the few weight loss programmes that could still operate. Previously, people opted for online did so out of choice, but with lockdown, the people had to opt for online as a necessity. This presented many new problems as a big chunk of our customer base was not the most ”tech savvy” compared to the previous online customers.
“What’s an app?” or “I think the Google play store is too far from my house for me to be allowed travel to…” would give a flavour of what the team dealt with during that time. So we realised we needed to take these people by the hand and lead them through this technical barrier.
We were lucky because the platform we picked was the one most universities use for their online classes. And although it was far too big and expensive to justify the cost, we decided to invest in it for its reliability. It was relatively straightforward to get people up and going. I saw so many businesses try to move online at that time with not good results, so I was so grateful we had been a few years ahead in terms of our online presence. Even before the pandemic, getting an online programme up and running well and successfully is far, far harder than people would believe.
We were also aware that at this crazy time in the world when people needed us more than ever, we couldn’t get to everyone who wanted to join us. Many were suddenly out of work and were no longer in a position to pay. So we made a decision to add a resources page to our website with recipes, video content, blogs, ebooks, and lots of other helpful content to try to keep people healthy and to feel connected to something. Because of these efforts, people who had previously not known about us got to know us, even in different parts of the world.
At a personal level, COVID was a huge challenge and not a good time for me. Although an only child, I’m not good with isolation. Because of my daily morning and nightly videos on the BodySlims app, I found myself answering the emails coming in. So many people were saying, “You got me through COVID,” and my answer was always the same: “No, you got me through it.” And I meant that – my responsibility to those people kept me going. I know far too many people who lost their sobriety during COVID. I was again lucky as my BodySlims friends kept me on track. I was honest with the group about my own struggles and my determination to keep going and I think people responded to that honesty. It was a tough time but we came through it, together.
BodySlims: The journey ahead
It was two years before hotels were back in business and during this period, we made the monumental decision not to go back to the rooms. With a newfound determination, we put in all our efforts into the online programme. The truth was I couldn’t have kept up with the hybrid schedule for very long so in some ways the decision made itself.
We also benefited from all the people who would never have enrolled for an online programme now having been forced to embrace the online world during COVID being more open to trying it out and loving. Not having to make a venue at a specific time on a specific day, try to find parking etc., the app in your pocket made everything so much easier.
We were determined not to switch to the “always on formula” where you would just record material and people could sign up and start anytime. While this method is the dream of online businesses (often dubbed to make money while you’re sleeping) we decided to stick to our three courses a year model. It’s you with us and the rest of the group for 10 weeks.
We can’t say we were right as it depends how you measure it. The “always on” model makes more money but we were more interested in maintaining and improving our customers’ results. We were absolutely sure that our way is the right way to do that. And we’re delighted to say it works. People told friends and family about their results and they came on and it just continued on to where we are today – Europe’s fastest growing weight loss programme being used on every continent in the world.
It’s been some journey but we’ve managed to stay true to ourselves and our ethics and still manage to be successful. The heroes of this story are undoubtedly our customers. They put their faith in us all along the way and they promoted us. Many people, after years of trying, found BodySlims so successful they did things they’d never normally do. What kind of results do you have to produce to get a senior partner from one of the Big Four based in Heuston Texas to make daily videos to promote BodySlims? This particular participant advocated for us, a company they had no financial interest in, on their social media apps. That’s one person and there are thousands more just like this. Why? It’s a good question. The weight loss may always be the headline act but in BodySlims, we believe our mission is to empower people to live their best lives. And I’m happy to be able to say we are doing that.
Taking people from “unhappy” and “stuck” to “free”, “back in control” and “happy” again. I have an oft used line that “What you get from working with me, as amazing as it might be (and we’re talking about the weight loss here) will not be as important as who you become from working with me.” I’m always delighted to hear about the many other changes people make in other areas of their lives buoyed by their success on BodySlims.
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We now have an advisory board of past customers with stellar careers at the very top of the business world helping us. They do not do it for financial gain, they do it simply because they have witnessed first-hand the effectiveness of the methods. They are evangelical about trying to bring this message to as many people as possible and we appreciate their efforts so much.
Where does the journey end? We have no idea… We never had a plan, remember? It will ultimately end one day, but until that day we’re just going to keep going and enjoying it.
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We were told the model wouldn’t work, we were told we’d have to go to “always on” to be successful online. We were told we’d have to add sell-on products and have higher priced upsell courses. We never told anyone they were wrong but we’ve managed to stay true to our own beliefs and our own ethics. We’ve managed to build a worldwide online weight loss business but we are still essentially what we started out as – a family business just trying our best to help people to the best of our ability as we did on the walks in the rain and the wind, down the piers of Howth, Dunlaoghaire and the N11. We may be a little drier these days, but our commitment to our customers remains the same.
Meet the team
Gerard Moran
Unique insights based on unique experiences. Gerard is regarded as Europe’s Premier Peak Performance Coach. He makes weight loss simple.
Gerard has spoken to over 100,000 people with his keynote ‘Stepping Out of Your Shadow’ Seminar. He devised the Body Slims program specifically to meet the growing demand on his other programs for those who wanted to lose weight.
Using many of the same methods as used on his award winning motivational seminars, the Body Slims programme is proving there is another better way to achieve real and lasting weight loss.
He turns the way we think on it’s head, removes the blockages and makes the previously bewildering blindingly simple. And has you laughing at yourself most of the time.
Sharon Tinkler
Sharon is the founder of Stepping Out which went on to become the largest dance fitness company in the British Isles. Sharon devised the incredibly popular Salsa Slims program which has had over 70,000 members in Ireland alone over ten years.
She has made numerous TV and radio appearances and been the subject of many newspaper features on matters relating to fitness and health. Sharon is the people person, meet her once, you have a new best friend.
Guiding Principles
When Sharon asked me to put together a programme specifically for weight loss I was reluctant. Not because I didn’t think I could put a great programme together or because I didn’t want to help people but because I don't like the weight loss industry. I think it’s full of flawed thinking and down right deceit. And I was concerned about guilt by association. But Sharon persevered (she’s very persistent) and finally I consented with a couple of caveats.
- I would develop the best programme on the market not the one with the best business plan for growth or scalability. I just wanted it to be the best weight loss programme, period.
- It had to be affordable to as many people as possible, not an elitist high price programme available only to the wealthy.
- It had to be a format men would feel comfortable with
- It had to be built around the blocks of successful weight maintenance. I‘d long ago realized that weight loss was only the first problem, weight maintenance was the bigger issue.
Behind the scenes
I've used Body Slims to lose 5 stone and I've really enjoyed the process. Inspiring people to take the right steps for themselves is no easy task but it's one Gerard is a master of.
Along with achieving great personal results on Body Slims, I have been impressed with the sound science underpinning the programme and the way it is used in a simple and practical way to achieve such exceptional results
Success Stories
I am a mom of 2 beautiful children and a Very Supportive Husband David from Kilmainhamwood, Kells, Co Meath, I'm 5ft 3" on a good day and I work 2 Part-Time Jobs as our local Parish Administrator and Bar-Tender in my local Pub (Keogan's) I will be 50 years young in September 2022 and will look better that I've looked in the past 20 years all thanks to BodySlims. I lost 63lbs ( 4 and half stone) in 5 months with 2 BodySlim Programmes. The Best decision I ever made.
63lbs
4.5st
Wow what a difference 10 weeks has made to my life, I am 21.8Ibs down and my journey is only beginning, I have loved the Program so much so, I signed up for the 2nd Program on the 3rd week of my 1st. My problem has always been keeping it off, it's hard work, no doubt about it but this time I have said...I am never ever going back, think Gerard is in my head,
21.8Ibs
1.5st
I'm just 4lbs off my target weight of 14 stone. This time last year I was 18.5 stone and miserable. I've never been as positive and happy with my appearance. If my experience could help out anybody else, I would be honoured.
63lbs
4.5st
I joined Bodyslims in January 2017 based upon results I’d seen from people in work and mutual friends. To be honest I didn’t have much hope for myself as I’d always struggled with weight loss and sticking to a certain plan.
70 lbs
5st 0lbs
