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Real men, real weight loss stories
We call them Amazing Losers, but you might know them as weight loss before and after stories. They’re motivating, honest, and there’s not a magic pill in sight.
The MAN v FAT Weight Loss Diaries – Meet The Men
With so many men using January as a stepping stone to embark on a health journey, we thought it would be a good idea to meet some of the guys who are losing weight and follow along to see what issues come up across the weeks as they lose weight. All of our guys have committed to sharing their weight loss journeys, warts and all – so when the bad weeks come along (which they always do!) you’ll have a front row seat to see how they deal with them.
Cory Hickton, 35, Mansfield
I don’t really have any photos of me on my own, it might not surprise you to know that I hate the camera, but my wife did this photo montage a couple of weeks back from photos she’s in. The image on the left is more ‘now’, The one on the right was this summer when I was at my heaviest.
Like most overweight people out there, I haven’t always been big. When I was in my teens I was pretty skinny, but in 2004/2005, two key moments changed this for me. I was an active kid growing up. I played football, and tennis and loved to ride my bike. In November 2004, all that started to change. I passed my driving test. At the time I didn’t think anything of it, but looking back now, this is where the skinny me started to be consumed.
Fast forward to April 2005 and I landed my first full-time job in IT. I still work in this field and I have been desk-based ever since. Mix in the fact I’m earning a full-time wage and downstairs was a canteen that sold lovely bacon cobs… you get the idea. Bye-bye goes that 34″ waist.
I’ve spent the best part of the last 12 years trying to lose weight. Whether it be another stab at Slimming World or trying to wrap my head around not eating enough points on Weight Watchers, I yoyo’d big time. I’d always start with the best intentions of “this is it this time”. But I always hit a wall around 10 weeks in.
What never really sat right for me was the feeling of never being part of the group. There were always plenty of women in these groups, but there were only one or two other blokes there. I wasn’t ever comfortable in the groups and it led to me never asking for help/advice when I needed it.
Roll on to 2022 and I saw a program on TV about younger people being overweight and blaming their parents. I didn’t feel this way, but I picked up on one of the episodes where the young lad had joined a football league for fat men. A quick Google search on my phone later brought me to MAN v FAT Football.
Before the Christmas break, I was 13 weeks in and down 9.7kg. Slow but steady progress and finally a feeling of being accepted for who I am. I don’t have to get my head around any sort of diet system, I simply aim to be in a calorie deficit. Everything in the UK has to have its nutritional info on display, this makes it so easy to keep track. I now have no more figuring out if I can simply eat something I crave.
Steve Mason, 35, Cardiff
As a bloody tall bloke, we are talking 6’6″, so door frame size, it would look like my family is cursed, cursed with fatness. Not only am I fat, but my entire father’s side of the family is fat. Now, having had a baby boy recently my weight is completely out of control and I’m currently the heaviest I have ever been 140KG. Looking at my son and thinking about all the cool things to do, the one thing they all have in common is that they require me to not be a blob. After hitting this disappointing milestone in my life I have made it my mission to make sure that the eating habits of not just myself, but generations of family do not come to haunt my son.
My aim is to lose 20KG in 20 weeks. I believe it is a respectable and achievable weight loss goal. Like Cory, I have tried Weight Watchers and Slimming World and I am sure they have their benefits. I have a raft of weight loss certificates from them and talking about your feelings on your journey is good in a group setting like that. But as someone who is partial to emotional eating, having a slip and a gain in a week and then talking about it, only really makes me want to do it more and therein lies the circle of my particular personality. I am great when I am on it, but when it comes to a weight gain, I don’t fall off the wagon, it collapses under the weight of all those Tunnocks Caramel Wafers!
Until now, disappointing myself with those weight gains in front of a group of people who don’t really matter in a Slimming World class was fine, as I could eat that away and the whole cycle can start again. Having people with a vested interest in you doing well, and the pressure of not wanting to let your team down is a game changer and that’s where MAN v FAT Football works for me! After hearing my brother-in-law find it through Facebook, I figured my competitive nature and team attitude would fit this style quite nicely so I am just going in belly first and excited to start my journey off differently, with a team behind me!
Andrew Shanahan, 45, Manchester
When I weighed myself towards the end of 2022 I was seriously pissed off, because I’d somehow managed to let four stone creep on from when I was at my optimum weight – which was around 12 stone. The reason is altogether too familiar to many guys. I’d got an injury, stopped playing sport but hadn’t adjusted my eating or drinking to take that into account. Fast forward a few years and suddenly I was staring at a gut that I had to remove – again!
I find that the key for weight loss for me is accountability. If I know I’ve got to go and stand on some scales in front of someone else then I’ll do my best to lose weight. Add in the idea that I’m letting my team down and I’d be seriously annoyed with myself if I didn’t lose weight each week. My approach when it comes to weight loss is to simply make healthier choices and record everything that I eat and drink. I know that I also need to build in a couple of meals each week where I can let things slide a bit more. The key though is to keep that to two meals, rather than two (then two and a half, then three…) days.
I’m also looking forward to the football slowly getting me back into exercise and movement again. I have to admit I’m a bit worried, because at 45 I’m starting to get a bit creaky and I’ve got a spinal problem that I need to be careful of. That said, the best thing that I can do to improve my back is to lose weight – so it’s time to stop moaning and get losing!
What Did Our Amazing Losers Teach Us In 2022
As we reach the end of 2022, it’s a good time to take stock and figure out what, if anything, we actually learned. In the wider world we experienced a number of unwelcome surges whether they were from the cost of heating a home, to the beast of inflation. But what did we learn in the world of weight loss? We took a look at some of the advice and inspiration offered from 2022’s Amazing Losers.
Our first Amazing Loser of the year featured this advice from MAN v FAT Football player Anthony Winstone, who has lost 36lbs, which is helping towards his aim of chasing his daughter around the park and driving a Ferrari (we’re assuming that those two aims aren’t connected!) His top tips, alongside drinking enough water was to ensure that the focus of any guys who were losing weight was to ensure your diet was in order.
75% of weight loss is what you eat, so put a massive focus on it. Anthony Winstone.
It’s a point well made, so often blokes can start a health kick by joining a gym, or a MAN v FAT Football league and feel that the uptick in exercise will be enough to help them lose weight. It’s obviously a huge factor, both for mental health, motivation and enjoyment but if you don’t look at your diet then there are no number of laps around a park, or games of football that will see you regularly losing weight.
After he was diagnosed with M.E. our Amazing Loser Vince H, has made significant changes to his lifestyle and his eating and drinking, which has seen him drop over 40lbs. As Vince had to work around the energy issues that the M.E. bought, he started off by simply changing his eating to a much lower carb diet and focused on simply doing short walks. This highlights an interesting point that it’s fine to start small. Even if you only feel that you can get to the end of the road and back – that’s enough, the more important thing is to begin your journey towards health.
The lifestyle changes that I have made are for life; one day at a time. If I slip off program, I quickly forgive myself and then get right back on it. Vince H
Interestingly, Tim Whitehurst was another Amazing Loser to make the point that starting small was a good way to begin.
Walking is vastly underrated as a tool to help you lose weight and it is low impact to your joints, I feel this helped me massively to
shift some of those first couple of stone which then allowed me to become more mobile and step up the activity levels.
Tim’s real insights came about in the field of mental health. He felt that it was his weight that was starting to cause issues with his mental health and since he has lost nearly 100lbs, he’s convinced that there’s a clear link between feeling good mentally and feeling good physically.
Outside of the nutritional advice I’ve read up on the link between physical exercise and mental health is just something that cannot be denied. I have found so many times if I’ve been having a tough time either with work or my personal life, then doing something active helps me to relax, reset my brain and look at things differently.
Alongside the connection between mental and physical health – a number of Amazing Losers pointed out just how important for their weight loss it had been to stop drinking. For some this meant pressing pause on the beer while they lost the weight, for others it meant a more permanent vacation from the booze.
When Jonathan Loesche turned 30 he started taking stock of his life and asking himself if he was getting everything he wanted. The answer was a resounding no and Jonathan stated that alcohol and his weight were two of the biggest issues that he faced. To combat one he stopped drinking, and for the other he sought the help of a weight loss surgeon. Combined with this was his work with a therapist, who helped him to see how he was hurting himself.
I’ve realised that I have an amazing support system of family & friends, who I couldn’t have done this without. I think through the therapy I’ve seen that life is worth living & that’s helped me to move on from being angry and bitter and wallowing in self pity.
Finally – one recurring theme from Amazing Losers this year has been the topic of accountability. It’s interesting that this has come up time and again and is perhaps a legacy of the introspection that we all engaged in during lockdown. Amazing Loser Ishaq Shakoor summed it all up nicely when he explained:
I’ve learned is no one is going to hold yourself accountable but you. If you feel people are watching you or judging you while you’re working out they’re most likely preoccupied in their own lives and if they are actually doing that then they’re pathetic and live a life without quality, so don’t let it stop you from improving yours.
It’s a fine challenge as we look towards what 2023 will have in store for us. What is holding you back from changing your life and if it’s something that you feel you can’t beat on your own, do you know that you’ve got help from others around you, and – of course – MAN v FAT? We can’t wait to tell your Amazing Loser story in 2023 and watch how you will inspire more men to win their battle against fat as well.
Amazing Loser Jay Nearly Halves His Body Weight To Beat Being Big
It was the word “big” that left an indelible mark on Jay when he met people he hadn’t seen for a while. Even though he’s 6’7″, he felt that he knew what they really meant. Read on and see how he turned his weight around and made a new life for himself at nearly half his weight.
Name Jay Bae
Age 22
Height 6’7
Weight at heaviest 400 (181kg)
Current weight 229 (103kg)
How long did it take you to lose it? About 10 months.
What’s your history with weight loss? I’ve always been a bigger kid, but around puberty I entered a really dark point in my life. I was pulled out of public school and put into an online/charter academy so I left the house much less frequently and pretty much never saw the friends I had from school. I was gaining weight, and unbeknownst to me, also suffering from depression and extreme anxiety. I was always in sports growing up and was still a little hefty, but stopping sports and not going anywhere sent me on a downhill slope.
How did you find life when you were bigger? Awful. I had tried “dieting” a couple times with my family, who are also quite big, but that stopped after about a month each time. I had just settled with the fact that I’d always be obese, nothing to be done about it. One of the main problems I had with it was how embarrassing it was to reunite or come face-to-face with people or family I hadn’t seen in years. Knowing that they’re seeing what I thought to be a monster when they looked at me. I’m also very tall, so being very fat just made me appear even bigger around other people.
I remember distinctly going to a church gathering at the church my family used to be a regular at, these people hadn’t seen me for near a decade and the main thing I’d be told by the people there was, “You’ve gotten so big”. Big. It stuck with me for some reason, not tall, big. And I knew they were right, I was just…big. I also hated how awful I would feel after gorging myself on food after a big meal, where I’d sometimes go back for seconds or thirds; not just emotionally feel but physically be in pain from how full I was.
I hated having to shop at the big and tall stores for something as simple as pants. I hated doing that so much that I pretty much only ever had like two pairs of pants at a time. My clothes would rip, or tear, or stretch, I just didn’t care enough to change the way I lived to fix it. I had extreme foot pain from just walking around a grocery store. I had to wait for a few seconds just to ease the pain in my feet from walking.
What was the point that you decided to do something about your weight? I pretty much only ever weighed myself at the doctor’s office when I was asked to. I was used to seeing 380, 390, 400 and everything inbetween. But one day I got on our home scale and saw 360 a number I hadn’t seen since I was a teenager. 360 is still very big but it ignited the thought in my head that I could actually lose weight.
What prep did you do before starting to diet? I wouldn’t say I prepped much at all really. I just decided to stop snacking throughout the day and eat healthy, balanced meals. I also started going to my local Planet Fitness every other day or more. I didn’t really have a life before my weight loss, so it was easy to find the time.
What would a standard breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, drinks be before your weight loss? I honestly cannot even give you an idea. I ate whatever was available to me. We ate out a lot. And our home-cooked meals were almost never accompanied by a green. And almost always fried in some manner. I just didn’t care. I wasn’t a sweets person, I preferred savory food. I ate a lot of rice. A lot. I cooked a lot of Korean dishes, so rice always went hand-in-hand. I loved pasta too, the cheesier the better. Fried chicken, pork chops, pizza, chips, ice cream… You know, the works!
And what would you eat after your weight loss? For breakfast I would have a bowl of oatmeal topped with an egg, baked veggie, and a tiny bit of sodium-free soy sauce. For lunch I’d have a fruit like a banana or apple and maybe some cheese and nuts. Dinners were always a cut of chicken with a varying veggie as a side. Usually broccoli or zucchini. As for beverages, I basically exclusively drank water and lots of it. It helped keep me feeling fuller throughout the day and definitely helped with loose skin along the line. I wouldn’t call it a snack but I also took up chewing gum; I knew that I was a food addict, so having something to chew on that had a flavor helped me a lot to ease that craving.
What was your technique to lose weight? It was simply to eat less and do more in my day. I entered a calorie deficit of about 1500 a day. I knew that that was lower than what my body naturally burned in a day so anything I could do to remain active during the day would help that much more. My trips to the gym consisted of weight training for around 10-15 minutes, followed by 10-20 minutes of light cardio.
What three things did you learn along the way? Three things I learned along the way were one, body dysmorphia is very real and very tough to fight. I still have a hard time seeing my current reflection and not feel like I felt a year ago. Two, losing 170+ pounds is expensive! I’ve gone through two entire wardrobes since starting my journey; started at 3x, eventually went to 2x where I thought I’d remain, but found out I’m actually small enough to fit in 1x! So I guess while it is expensive, you open yourself up to being able to wear 1x-3x tops, great for when thrifting! But impossible with pants, which are less budget friendly.. but hey, I can fit into the pants I wore during middle school again! … Just a little tall for them. Lastly, I learned that life is actually fun! I’m glad to go out and do things now that I’m not embarrassed to be in public or around friends. I learned that I really like to wear nice outfits and feel confident in public, something I never even dreamed of before.
What tips do you have for other men who want to lose weight? Keep trying, it’s possible. Even if and when you hit a slump in your weight loss, keep pushing!
If someone is reading this and they recognise themselves in you, what would you say directly to them? You won’t always feel the way you feel right now. You just need to focus on you and your goals. The road looks impossible to pass and you will have bumps along the way, but continuing on is more than worth it. It’s given me a whole new lease of life, it will for you too.
Yeah some things don’t change because you get skinnier, but a lot of things will, even things you don’t even know about yourself yet. I’ve experienced things since losing weight in only nine months that a year ago, never even crossed my mind as a possibility. So whatever rut or hole you feel like you’re in because of your weight, know that there is a completely new life waiting for you on the other side of it. You really just need to try.
Our thanks to Jay for sharing his Amazing Loser story with our MAN v FAT readers, it’s always inspirational when someone meets the adversity that they face and come out the other side looking so amazing! Congratulations Jay!
How Amazing Loser Blake Beat His Emotional Eating
Jonathan Battled His Inner Demons to Become a 300 lb Amazing Loser
Amazing Loser Trevor Holland
Working as a landlord at multiple pubs can lead to an occupational hazard of late night eating and pint drinking. Read on to find out how Trevor managed to lose weight, with a little help from his MAN v FAT Football coach and teammates…
Name: Trevor Holland
Age: 41
Location: Caister-on-Sea, Norfolk
Club: MAN v FAT Great Yarmouth
Weight lost: 44.4kg (6st 13.9lbs, 97.8lbs)
What was your life like before you joined MAN v FAT Football?
I found it a hard one as didn’t think my size restricted me in my day to day work, but since losing weight I have now felt that it did restrict me in a lot of simple things like energy levels, working alongside people behind the bar and in the kitchen and making time for myself to get fit.
So since losing my weight I have also realised that before joining MAN v FAT I was not happy with my health, size and inability to be able to run about and have fun/play football with my kids.
What made you decide to change?
I went to Mexico on a family holiday and was told I was to fat for the water rides!! It felt like a massive kick in the nuts after finally managing to get time away from work to spend with my family, only to be told that I’d have to sit and watch them doing the activities knowing all the people in the queue are watching.
Being refused this was the start of a massive eye opener for me as I felt like I let my kids down.
What has it been like being a part of your MAN v FAT Football club?
Joining MAN v FAT football has definitely been the turnaround. It gives you a point to aim for at the session and a team that you certainly don’t want to let down.
I feel that playing on a Saturday morning is the reward for sticking to my diet all week and the amazing feeling stepping on the scales that you have lost again motivates you for the next week.
What did you eat before you lost weight?
I always found that it was not necessarily the fact that I was eating the wrong food, it was more about constantly nibbling at work especially when working in the kitchens.
After a long day at work the only thing that is open for quick and easy convenience is a takeaway
What do you eat now?
Breakfast: I always start my day with a banana
Lunch: I will have a chicken salad or a jacket potato
Dinner: I mainly have either chicken/salmon or steak with rice or boiled potatoes & salad or veg
I have found that sometimes it’s not necessarily what you eat, but the way you cook it
How has life changed now you’ve lost weight?
My life has already changed massively, I feel a hell of a lot more active and once again feel great about my presentation.
Only two weeks ago the game of football with my 13-year-old son was a sensational feeling as didn’t think I would ever get the chance to do that again.
The most difficult part about my journey was getting into the right mindset before I started. Once that was in place, the rest just followed.
My next step is to stay motivated and keep on this journey.
I haven’t got a final goal in my head, I just know I still have a long way to where I want to be but I have found it easier by setting small steps and smashing them often as opposed to one big step/goal and getting disappointed if you don’t hit it quick enough
What three things do other fat men need to know about losing weight?
1. Believe in yourself, We can all do it.
2. Every goal is achievable if you set small enough goals to be able to smash them
3. Remember it is only yourself you have to blame for getting fat and yourself that you will let down the most if you don’t lose the weight you wish to.
You’re Prime Minister for the day – what do you do to improve the health of the nation?
Encourage everyone to take part in at least one active event a week
Many thanks to Trevor for sharing his story! If you want to be featured as an Amazing Loser, send us an email – press@manvfat.com
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