My weight loss journey – how exercise changed my life

If you set yourself a vision then you should enjoy it

Click here to follow the res of My Weight Loss Journey

Stick with the method

In hindsight, once I had the method sorted it wasn’t difficult at all, it was just a case of keeping going. By the start of May I was back on the board after hardly doing any surfing for years Being much lighter and stronger made a massive difference to what I could do, I not only found my football mojo I rediscovered my surfing mojo as well.

I didn’t give up anything I liked, and in fact, ate a lot more of the things I like which fortunately are mostly protein.  One cappuccino a day instead of 3, 2 bottles of beer instead of 2 pints, it all adds up.

I’ve had to change all my cloths and now buy L or XL rather than XXL and XXXL and was a buzz getting into the Levi’s I bought 20 years earlier, and in fact they  are too big for me know.

I’ve also been absolutely amazed at how fit and strong a 59 year olds body can be, now that most of the muscle and joint problems have been fixed by exercise it does feel like there are not limits. I’d always liked Superdry, but their t-shirts and stuff were always too tight, so a new wardrobe of Superdry clobber made me so happy.

New cloths, new lifestyle

So I didn’t have to buy baggy or out of shape cloths, I can wear anything I want, I’ve had all my suits taken in round the waist and the shirts that I had “grown” out of are now the ones I wear all the time. To make sure I don’t grow back I haven’t kept my “fat wardrobe”, it’s all gone to the charity shop so I can enjoy buying new stuff.

The icing on the cake was when a mate, who had been following bits and pieces on facebook got in touch quite out of the blue from Brisbane, he was still playing competitive football in his 50s. On a trip down under I’d watched one of his games and couldn’t believe he was still playing at his age. This turned into an adventure that I didn’t expect.

He posted on Facebook he was about to play in a football tournament in Bali for his club the Brisbane Lions. I joked that I could have played and surfed at the same time and before I knew it I’d agreed to play to travel to Australia to play in a tournament, I combined with my surfing trip to Bali and canned the trip to NZ, you only live once !

So in 15 months, I had gone from hobbling around a football pitch shouting at the boys to playing in an international football tournament in Australia and surfing in Bali. All this was possible because the exercise helped free up my arthritis, which in turn meant I could do more exercise – it was a wonderful cycle and I’ve since discovered that there is a lot of research to support this now.

At the start of summer training for the boys team, instead of having me shouting at them from the touch line, Gary and I were leading them around the field doing circuits and playing in the practice games showing them how it should be done.

But most of all I feel happy and confidence, its really nice people paying me compliments and its not something that’s ever happened in the past. The last year probably sounds like it was a party but we had really tough times in work, but I am 100% sure that I got through it because of the health journey.

Achievements

I appreciate that I have opportunities that others won’t, but if you grab everything that comes along you can make a massive difference, so my life changed in 2018 to this extent:

1. I won my first football tournament in over 30 years
2. I’ve met more pals during the last year than in 20 previous years in the area, and some of them are now incredibly good friends
3. I went half way around the world to play football
4. I achieved a dream of surfing off a boat in Bali
5. Spent a week travelling along the surf coast of northern Spain with my youngest lad surfing and camping
6. My boys football team won the league, they have gone from bottom of division 2 to winning division 1 of their year group in 15 months – largely because Gary and myself were fit enough to lead the fitness training and improve their discipline
7. I even bought a Mini Cooper S so I could have more fun – I was young again