For Karen Magnum and her staff in the Diet Center, it is all about witnessing their clients make positive changes.

She says in many cases people don’t make time for themselves or for their health, which is an issue that should be a priority.

Mrs. Magnum said some of the worst offenders were women who have to juggle family, career, home and everything else.

When asked how she manages to keep people who are incredibly busy, motivated, she said: “Well you have to fit it into your time and ask yourself, are you a priority in your life?

“Health is a priority and health is an issue and you have to schedule it into your appointment book. This is especially women who have careers and children — they have to make time for themselves, they make time for everyone else.

“Once you get into it, you begin to like it when you see the results.”

The Diet Center is now an American franchise, but it initially began as a cottage industry.

Diet Center’s can now be found all across the US and for the last two decades, here in Bermuda too.

She and her husband Ron bought the Diet Center shortly after they returned to the Island in 1992, since which the programme has grown considerably.

It offers counselling, weigh ins, and proper nutrition training and fat tests aimed to determine body fat/muscle ratios.

She explained that there were three diets on offer, Exclusively You, Instant Shape Up and Thermogenics.

“It is all healthy eating,” she said. “All the programmes are aimed at helping you to lose about two pounds a week. There are three different programmes: Exclusively You, is where you can eat food all day. There is also the Instant Shape Up, which has three meal replacement bars or shakes and you just have to eat a set dinner.

“Then we have Thermogenics, which is bars, shakes and food.”

Along with the diet, they offer one-on-one counselling, she explained.

“You come in three days a week to get weighed in, and when you come you bring what is called a programme journal in which your write down everything you have eaten.

“Also you have to tick off the exercise you have done and we’ll keep an eye on that.

“When you first come in we do a body fat test, a lipograph test to see how much fat you have on your body and we do that once a month.

“People do get caught up on the scale — we do weigh, but it is more for a mental thing, and when people think they have to get weighed in they think, ‘oh, I won’t cheat’.

“It is about health issues, it is not about the way you look.”

“We counsel on behaviour changes, as well. We give out recipes, and you get free use of the gym and a free personal training session.”

She says that by the end of the programme they will not only have lost weight, but they will also be armed with knowledge about the correct portions, nutrition and what type of food they should be eating.

She then talked about one of the Diet Center’s recent success stories.

“I have been doing this since 1992 and I have seen people lose hundreds of pounds, but this guy has lost nearly one hundred pounds in three months. It is absolutely phenomenal!

“He came in here under the advice of his diabetic counsellor, she is a friend of mine, and he was 200 pounds overweight.

“When he came in here he could hardly walk on the treadmill, maybe 30 seconds, now he can walk for a half hour on the treadmill and when he comes in he is all excited and we are all excited too.

“This is what we do, we get involved when we see people’s lives changing. For me this is what makes this job rewarding.”