People & Lifestyle story, June 2005
| CHOCOHOLIC’S
SACRIFICE
Prostate Research Campaign’s Lesley licks her love of chocolate for the charity As appeared in the Wandsworth Guardian By: Andrea Kon |
Most women give up chocolate in a bid to loose weight. But not self-confessed chocoholic Lesley Catterall. When the 37-year-old Yorkshire born Events Manager, who now lives in Battersea, gave up a 20-year career with the Post Office to join Prostate Research Campaign UK in their Putney based office at half her former salary, she decided that just working for them wasn’t enough. She wanted to do something pro-active to raise money for the charity, which funds research into all prostate disease. So to the surprise of her boss Brigadier John Anderson, she vowed to give up eating chocolate for three months. And to everyone’s amazement, not a morsel of her favourite candy passed her lips for a total of 93 days - or, as she laughs, 2232 hours.
"My favourite chocolate bars are Topics and Snickers and Fry’s Chocolate Cream", she admits. "I used to enjoy Twix too and I’d have at least one bar of one of them a day. Sometimes more. As a special treat I’d indulge myself with a Mars-bar. Like most people I’ve got my special way of eating it. I like to nibble the chocolate off the outside first. Then I turn it upside down, and eat all the caramel from the bottom. After that, I’m left with the chocolate biscuit in the middle and the best way to enjoy that is to dunk it in a proper Yorkshire brew that’s strong enough to stand a teaspoon up in."
During her sponsored chocolessathon, selfless Lesley declined chocolate of any kind, even the merest sprinkling on her cappuccino. "My then boy-friend knew how much I missed my chocolate treats so when we were out one day, he bought me an ice-cream," she says. "I told him I’d have my second favourite after chocolate - pralines and cream. I took just one mouthful and it had barely passed my lips when I realised there was chocolate in it. I made him check the box and sure enough, there was chocolate listed in the contents. He ended up eating mine, so he had two tubs full and I had none."
Lesley raised £315 for the charity by sponsorship, and donated another £48, the amount of money she reckoned she’d saved by not buying chocolate bars. She says she thought her chocolessthon might help her loose some weight, but to her disappointment, she hadn’t lost a single 1lb at the end of her self imposed endurance test.
"I thought it might put me off eating chocolate," she says. "I stayed up until midnight to time the end of my trial to count the final one of my 2232 chocolate free hours were up, I made a cup of tea and tucked into two chocolate cream éclairs. The first one tasted fantastic. The second gave me a terrible headache. And I soon discovered that my chocolate-free days have put me off Twix bars forever. I find them too sweet now. Nothing, however, could put me off Jaffa cakes. I could still eat those until the cows come home."
Says Brigadier Anderson, Chief Executive of Prostate Research Campaign UK: "We didn’t believe she could do it, but Lesley has done us proud. It was a fun thing to do and we hope that her selfless action will encourage other people to think of unusual ways to raise money so we can beat prostate disease, including prostate cancer, once and for all."
For further information about the work of Prostate Research Campaign UK or for information about prostate disease, please review this website or contact us at the address below.