In reminiscence of Margaret | Slimming World Weblog

It’s with an extremely heavy coronary heart that we announce that Margaret Miles-Bramwell, our beloved founder, handed away on Sunday 2nd February, surrounded by her household.

A daughter, a mom, a lover, a spouse; an entrepreneur, a colleague, a buddy and a fighter – Margaret Miles-Bramwell can be remembered as a pioneer on the earth of weight administration. A lady who put folks earlier than revenue, widespread sense earlier than guidelines – and love earlier than all else.

Born in April 1948 and adopted quickly after by Emma-Selina and Samuel Birch, Margaret grew up within the humble environment of South Normanton – a small mining village in Derbyshire. In 1963, aged 15, Margaret fell pregnant with daughter, Claire. Thrown out by her dad and mom, she was pressured to go away faculty and abandon her goals of college. She made a house with Claire’s father, Roy, and located work to offer for her child. 

It was a seismic sequence of occasions that finally formed the lady Margaret turned: somebody with a profound understanding of and compassion for the emotional wants of others; with robust beliefs and a way of what’s proper (and what isn’t); and with grit and willpower to reside and work by these beliefs – it doesn’t matter what. These highly effective private qualities went on to form the small enterprise Margaret began in an Alfreton church corridor 55 years in the past – a slimming group with a revolutionary consuming plan and a assist system designed to place an finish to the disgrace, guilt, judgement and humiliation confronted by these battling their weight in Nineteen Sixties England. 

Though Margaret by no means felt comfy referring to herself as a ‘businesswoman’, it was a time period she grew to simply accept, as she resiliently and tirelessly labored to develop the UK and Republic of Eire’s most beloved and trusted weight reduction organisation – Slimming World. 

“I by no means noticed myself as neither a businesswoman nor an entrepreneur”, she wrote in her 2019 autobiography, Wild Girls Do (and so they don’t remorse it!). “I suppose it was as a result of I used to be by no means targeted on the enterprise per se. My focus was way more on what the enterprise was making an attempt to attain. I needed to assist folks – folks like me – to shed the distress and the burden of extra weight, with out having to undergo unnecessarily within the course of.”

Margaret spent nearly all of her 20s and 30s single-handedly juggling the challenges of being a younger mum along with her ever-growing enterprise. When Claire was 13, Margaret and Roy welcomed their first son, Dominic, adopted by Ben in 1980. Danny, Dominic’s shut buddy, turned a part of the household within the early Nineties. Margaret’s love for and dedication to her kids was deep and enduring, and our fast ideas are with them and their households.

Over the course of her early profession, Margaret navigated her manner via quite a few skilled and private challenges: separation and re-marriage, the devastating monetary repercussions of the three-day week, miners’ strikes and recession, the deterioration and demise of her father from motor neurone illness in 1986, caring for her mom throughout her decline from Alzheimer’s illness, along with a fractious enterprise partnership and the near-bankruptcy of Slimming World in 1986. She additionally co-managed a number of different companies alongside Slimming World – together with a kitchen design studio and, later, a hair and sweetness salon, the place Margaret saved up her immaculate sense of favor.

With the Nineties got here a brand new chapter for Margaret – one which introduced eternal love along with her late husband, Tony Whittaker; a ardour for crusing; the start of the primary promoting title, Slimming World Journal, and a complete new period of development for Slimming World. Her intensive research of behavioural psychology – collectively along with her deeply private understanding of the psychological and emotional challenges confronted by individuals who wrestle with their weight – enabled Margaret to additional develop her highly effective group assist mannequin, IMAGE Remedy, which she’d pioneered almost 20 years earlier than. In 1996, Margaret funded ground-breaking analysis on macronutrients in relation to weight administration and their vitality density and satiety to additional strengthen Slimming World’s Meals Optimising consuming plan. Supported by a rising staff of loyal and devoted workers, the corporate was in a position to open new teams at a gentle price and transfer to a purpose-built Head Workplace and Advisor coaching facility in Somercotes, Derbyshire, the place it stays at present.

In 1997, shortly after a daunting well being scare and main surgical procedure, Margaret based the charity SMILES – Slimmers Making It A Little Simpler For Somebody – which has, thus far, raised greater than £25m for charities together with the NSPCC, Barnardo’s, Nice Ormond Avenue Kids’s Hospital, Most cancers Analysis UK, Alzheimer’s UK and the Irish Most cancers Society. She turned a patron of the NSPCC in 2000. All through the late 90s and 2000s, Margaret cut up her time between her cottage in Mansfield Woodhouse and a second dwelling in Mallorca, the place she and Tony ran additional profitable companies together with the spectacular dinner present, Son Amar, Mallorca Sea College and Charters, and boutique yacht builder, Pearl Yachts.

One of the particular moments in Margaret’s life occurred in 2009, when she acquired an OBE for companies to the well being of the nation and to charity – a defining second in her profession and within the historical past of Slimming World.

In 2010, Margaret was awarded an honorary Masters diploma from the College of Derby, which led to the creation of the ‘Miles-Bramwell Chair in Behaviour Change and Weight Administration’ – giving Slimming World’s analysis specialists additional alternatives to review the scientific complexities of weight problems and lifelong weight reduction. 

In 2020, when the worldwide pandemic pressured our nations into lockdown, Margaret unflinchingly launched emergency monetary reserves to Slimming World and its Advisor franchisees – supporting and finally saving the corporate from the biggest-ever risk to its existence. So robust was her willpower to proceed Slimming World’s work serving to members discover well being and happiness – in addition to to guard and nurture the careers she’d helped create in her groups of area managers and Head Workplace staff. 

Margaret’s husband, Tony, died in 2021, following a heroic combat with most cancers and Alzheimer’s illness. Regardless of the extraordinary grief that adopted, Margaret, true to kind, refused to surrender on life – and within the years that adopted, she funded and passionately supported groundbreaking immunotherapy analysis in collaboration with Tony’s specialist, Professor Christian Ottensmeier.   

Margaret concluded her autobiography with these phrases – phrases which can endlessly ring true, and fondly remind us of the particular person she was:

“Constructing a more healthy future is paramount if our youngsters, and theirs, are to outlive. I subsequently hope and pray that in future, as now, our income can be used to advertise caring for these in want, and to assist all organisations that combat the evils of the world lengthy after I’ve left it. 

So my want for my circle of relatives, in addition to my different Slimming World household and for all my associates, is to proceed to work with true kindness and compassion in the best way you do, and to proceed to see and comply with the fitting path. I do know it’s not straightforward. Typically it’s extremely tough. Be very pleased with yourselves in your achievements and know simply how pleased with you I’m and the way a lot I really like you.

Yours, at all times and endlessly,

Learn the announcement of Margaret’s unhappy passing right here