Annette Syms Comes To Logan Central Library

Today, I was taken out to the new Logan Central Library to see an author talk about their life and times and how they came to writing their books.  Annette Syms was the great woman who showed up and talked to almost a hundred people about her battle with her weight.  She had tried all the diets there was; and hated herself for a very long time.  Annette told us that rock bottom was when she went swimming one day with her family and one of her friends took a candid photo of her - telling her to smile and she grimaced.  A few days later, her friend sent her photos and she saw what she looked like and cried over that one photo; and a plan was made; that plan was to get off her yo-yo dieting and start eating the food she has kept herself away from all this time.  However, she had to eat it in a way that it made her lose weight.  So, she looked at what was in her favourite food and began working out how to make it easily, with less fattening ingredients and quickly too.  She didn't want to be slaving over a hot stove in a kitchen for hours on end.  And before long, she had lost 35kg in 19 months.  So, she kept going and lost all the weight; and has kept it off for 19 years now... and she looks fantastic!

Annette with 'Old Annette' talking to a packed room at Logan Central Library

Annette demonstrating one of her meals from Book 6: a Chicken Tika.

I bought the first three books when they hit the stands on the first printing hoping I could figure out how to have a healthy lifestyle before my bad choices in eating caught up with me (yeah, in the past I didn't always make a good choice with food).  And when I found I could eat good food that still had the taste in it, I figured I could do it to a lot of my recipes I knew.   The best thing was that she met with her fans and signed everyone's books.  When she saw I had the first printings, she loved it; as they were the ones that made her famous.  She signed all three of them and we chatted for a moment; which she did with all her fans.   

Annette autographed all three of my recipe books; Mum borrowed one of them.

So, if you've got time, visit her site and find out how good her books are.  She had so much information to give us and she wanted to talk about self-publishing, but only had two hours to spare and couldn't.  She also cooked up a Chicken Tika dish; which I was told was delicious.