My recent weight loss story

Hi everyone,

I have been browsing the forums over the last month or so, and I thought it was time to share my story with everyone.

My name is Gianni, and I'm a 35 year old male from Melbourne, Australia. I have struggled with my weight my whole life. Having an Italian background, life revolves around food. My wife and I would get pizza once a week, I would often have chocolate, ice cream or cookies after dinner most nights, we would go to KFC on the weekends for lunch and the only exercise I would get it walking to the corner shop to get my next sugar hit!

My friends, family & work mates would often make jokes about my weight thinking that they were funny, but deep down I wasn't laughing (even though I tried to laugh it off). Deep down it hurt that when someone mentioned a buffet restaurant that they would always look at me and say something like 'you'd love it' or when at work there would be cake for someone's birthday and people would automatically assume that 'Gianni will want a piece' or when my own father would call me 'chunky' in front of the whole family. So I guess you could say, I was a bit of a joke to everyone.

Midway through 2012, my wife was pregnant with our little girl and we went to visit her doctor for a checkup. Her doctor was telling her that it was so important for her to take care of herself, then she looked at me and said that I need to take care of myself also! At the time I didn't think much of it, but over the next few months, I kept thinking about what the doctor said to me.

Then on 4/1/2013, my wife and I were blessed with the arrival of our beautiful little girl Bianca Belle. After watching her grow for a few months, she was laying on her play gym one day and I realized that soon she would start crawling and walking. I realized that I had a choice, I could either be the 'couch potato daddy' and just sit on the couch all day and most likely my daughter would follow in my footsteps, or I could become the 'active daddy' and set a good example for my little girl of what being healthy is. I knew that only 'active daddy' would be able to keep up with her, take her to the local parks and be the fit, happy & healthy daddy that she deserves.

I remember seeing something on the first series of the biggest loser a few years earlier, where "Harry" who was quite a large tradesman told the story how his kids made him drop them off a few blocks from their school every morning. He didn't realize at first, but they were embarrassed by the way their father looked. I knew I couldn't do this to my little girl so I thought I better do something about it.

Also, both my parents have diabetes and I knew that if I didn't do anything about this now, I was heading for diabetes myself as I was starting to have a few of the symptoms to 'pre diabetes'. Approaching 40, I knew that if I didn't change my life now, then I was most likely going to be like this until I die (which would most likely be sooner than I or anyone wanted.

March last year I started swimming twice a week (living in an apartment we have a pool & gym) which was more to do with helping my tight neck/shoulders rather than getting exercise. But I seemed to enjoy it and then I started to think, why don't I add more exercise and start eating a little better?

We went away for my wife's birthday in June 2013 and when we came back home I started adding some cycling on the exercise bike 3 times a week and started to eat a little healthier. I didn't want to diet, as they often fail. I just wanted to be a little healthier.

At first the weight loss was slow, but after a month or two, it really started to drop quickly. The more the weight dropped, the more motivated I was to exercise and eat even healthier. People started to notice and make positive comments which again, motivated me to keep on going.

I allowed myself only '1 treat meal' per week which was my reward for eating healthy and my wife started to eat more healthy and follow my example and started exercising also. We both encouraged each other which was a massive help, because if one of us was a little down, the other would 'pick them up' so to speak.

In November I had lost a fair bit of weight and I added running to my routine. Within 6 months of starting, I was exercising 7 times a week, eating very healthy and the weight was dropping off nicely.

I remember being so excited when 2 days before Christmas I ran 5K for the first time! This was me, running 5K in about 30min without any breaks! The most I had ever run previously was after the ice cream truck ha ha

I only found the MFP website in early Feb this year and I started tracking my calories and exercise which has really helped me fine tune my diet and I find that counting calories is a great way to stay accountable. I have also found the forums to be a great source of information and to know that there are many other people out there going through the same thing as me has helped, especially when there are times that I feel that no one understands what I am going through and that being healthy nowadays is weird and being unhealthy is normal.

I won't lie to anyone, this was hard work! I was exercising every day, I was eating so healthy and having to miss out on so many foods that I used to eat, but I was seeing results. I would do things like bring an apple with me to kids parties so I could at least eat something rather than be tempted by the sugary junk on offer. Generally people were understanding, but I had to learn to deal with a lot of ‘one snack won’t kill you’ or ‘don’t lose any more weight’ type comments.

Anyways, after many months of hard work, motivation, tears (yes, I was reduced to tears a few times, this April I weighed myself on the Saturday morning as I do every week, and I had officially lost 50.1kg. It didn’t really hit me at first, I just got ready and went straight to the gym like I normally do on the Saturday morning. But when I got home, showered and had breakfast, I was sitting on the couch talking to my wife about it and I started to cry. I realized that after being unhappy with my weight for ALL my life, I had finally achieved my goal. We then took the following picture to show the before & after and the next photo was later on at the park with my beautiful family.





Today (mid July 2013) I currently weight 65.5kg and last June I was 117.7, which makes a total weight loss of 52.2kg. I am so happy with how slim I look and how I fit into size 's' clothes, where I have always been a size 'XL' or even 'XXL'.

Now I am working on maintaining my weight loss and continuing to train hard. Maybe I'll do a triathlon, or maybe give a 1/2 marathon a go, or maybe just go to the gym and come home and take my little girl to the park! At least now I have choices rather than sitting on the couch saying ‘I’m too big to do that’

Sorry if this post is too long, but I just wanted to share my story with everyone and share a few points:

1. NEVER stop believing in yourself - I know, it’s not easy, but YOU CAN DO IT!
2. Don't listen to negative people. Trust in yourself!
3. The internet is a great source of information...MFP has been so helpful but I strongly recommend goggling 'coach calorie' as this site has alot of great, sensible articles
4. Everyone will fail, but it's you bounce back that matters
5. Find exercise and food that you enjoy and stick with it

Thank you for reading my story, I hope that my story can help motivate or inspire others

Final thoughts...
This is perhaps the hardest thing I have ever done, and I know I still have lots of hard work ahead of me to maintain this 'new me'. Each day is a challenge but I continue to eat healthy & train hard as I want to be the best husband, father and person I can be. I want to thank everyone for their support and encouragement during this time. Most importantly, I want to thank my amazing wife as I couldn't have done this without her support, encouragement, patience, love & great healthy cooking. She has kept me positive the whole time, never once been upset when I've gone to the gym instead of helping out with housework and always listens to me when I waffle on about calories or training etc. I couldn't ask for a more supportive wife. Thank you.