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

Talking about weight with others on the same journey really helps

Click here to follow the res of My Weight Loss Journey

Men don’t want to talk about weight. Nobody is happy being fat, we all want to be fit, be attractive and do sports. What I have learned from this is that if a guy is fat then there is probably something going on, the problem is they wont talk about, because we are men and tough.

I was watching the film Full Monty again last week, apart from being hilarious, I hadn’t realised that it had touched on such a range of male self esteem issues at the time.

Most weight loss classes are designed for women, so the Man V Fat , initiative is totally unique and focused on male issues. It really works but it is down to you and how committed your team are but you need to set your own goals and objectives, it isn’t any sort of magic formula.

Initially it didn’t work for me, I was 59 and most of the guys were much younger and were judging me as soon as I turned up. I did a season and I decided to change teams as I hadn’t found the original group particularly inspirational but partly that was my fault as I had been injured a lot.

My new team were all new lads, we called ourselves Real Madras and I volunteered to be captain as I wanted to make sure we focused on weight loss, not worrying too much about football or crap chat like the other team.

This bunch of guys have been wonderful, not only have they been fantastic support for each other.  We started together at the end of March 2018, I was already on a roll by then but they really gave me renewed focus. 7 years on, when we see each other, the opening line will be something like “your looking good mate”, or “how is the weight going”

In the opening 2 games we had two lads who were so badly injured they were off work for 10 days, that back to wall spirit that we found on the pitch worked off the pitch as well. By the end of the season were moved from being target practice for the others to runners up in the league and winning the cup – fantastic.

I had already introduced a mate (Gary who helped me run the boys team) and we were already encouraging each other anyway. Another one of the guys (Chris) was into mountain biking so we started doing a few rides, so very quickly it was more than a football team, the guys really came together as a unit supporting each other on and off the pitch.

ManVFat is a framework within which you can manage your weight loss, it is your team that makes it happen. The whole team needs to be bough into the aspiration, one or two people not trying hard enough  off the pitch will let everyone else down.

In the first season, Chris lost 20% of his weight, Gary lost 15%, I lost another 10% and everyone else went over 5%. That is incredible for one season, and to be fair, we couldn’t keep it up but in the second season.

By June I was able to get back into my 1988 BBC 1^st XI shirt that I kept as a souvenir of a season when we won the league, 6 months earlier it would haven’t have gone over my shoulders. Hitting 13st 6lb was big for me, that was my footballing weight in my mid 20s, I honestly still can’t believe I managed it.

The big challenge is to avoid getting hungry or into a situation where you are hungry and there is junk food around. When you are on the weight loss journey you have to stay disciplined within boundaries.

If you go over the calorie limit for the day you have to earn the calories back so find somewhere to walk it off for an hour or an extra trip to the gym will get you a Big Mac if you want.  On a Sunday I regularly burn off 1800 calories by doing a 3 hour bike ride and taking the dog for a 10km work and you feel great afterwards.

I was big on carrying protein bars around with me, they are there if you get peckish, lighter in calories and more filling because of the protein, they are quite cheap if you buy them in bulk