My Big Fat Obese Story: Part 3
How I escaped depression to give myself a second chance, and how a terrorist attack changed my outlook on life.
In Part 2 I told you about how I made huge progress before being stopped in my tracks by a car crash. Next I’ll tell you about how The Grand National weekend would be the second breakthrough moment in my life. I’ve referred to it as magic once or twice, and it is. It was a few magic words that changed everything.
The Grand National
I’d travelled over to the Isle of Man to spend the weekend of The Grand National with my sister and my nephew, and on the Saturday we (along with one of my favorite people, Sandra Mc) went to get drunk. Oh and to watch the National… obviously.
At one point in the night we were sat talking in a bar about losing weight as a general topic, and I brushed over how I’d done it before but the crash got in my way. Not in a ‘pity me I got hit by a bitch in a van’ kind of way, just candidly admitting that I let it defeat me, really. After a while there was nothing physically stopping me from doing it again, my physical pain had healed. It was all a mental limitation that I was setting on myself because of depression and low self esteem.
Now I’m sat here thinking maybe I shouldn’t have written any of these blogs. Maybe I should have just posted the 6 words that Sandra told me.
You have to want it enough.
We were sat in a fairly noisy lively bar, but suddenly all I could hear were those words repeating in my mind. Sandra wasn’t aiming these words at me, and she wasn’t saying it to be dismissive of my struggle. It was just a simple fact; and really, it applies to anything, doesn’t it? To do anything in this life, you have to want it enough. Not just want it. Want it enough.
On Sunday morning I was somber and sober. Those words from the night before had stuck with me, and I felt different. By 11am that morning I’d ordered a Joe Wicks Lean in 15 recipe book on Amazon to be delivered to my home the next day.
My plane had landed in Liverpool that night, and on my way home from the airport I’d usually pick up my car and stop off at KFC, or another drive thru for a needlessly unhealthy meal. Not this time; I just went home.
360 Degrees
The next morning, being back at home, I felt refreshed and had a renewed focus. I felt great, and I knew that things were different now. They just were.
My first focus was on cooking for myself at home, which I barely ever did. At work I was eating Tesco Meal Deals, so whilst that could have been a whole lot better it could have been a hell of a lot worse, and it definitely wasn’t the root of my problem. So for now I focused on the most destructive part of my diet, my evening meals.
By the end of the first week I’d prepared my first healthy cooked meal in forever, deleted the JustEat app from my phone, signed up to the gym, purged the “crap cupboard” and had gone a week without fried food.
This was the beginning of a fundamental change to my entire life.
The Gym
In my first week I signed up for the closest gym to my work. I hated going to the gym, and I still dislike it; for many reasons which I’ll talk about in a future post. But from day one I knew that living in the gym would not be my life. I quickly set the following rules for myself
- I would go every week day, straight from work
- I would spend no more than half an hour there in total
- I would warm up, do a 20 minute HIIT session, and warm down
- If I missed a day I would have to make up for it at the weekend
I’ve stuck to these rules ever since, and I feel like having this routine as part of my life is very convenient. I’m only getting home an hour later and it rarely affects my commitments in the evenings. I also made sure to have plenty of gym wear. I have 3 different gym outfits in total, that way there can alway be some in the wash and you can never use not having any clean or dry ones as an excuse.
Because I’m not spending hours at a time at the gym like some do, and I’m doing a quick and hard 20 minute session, it’s hard to get bored. I find the gym tedious enough without walking at a snails pace for an hour. I’d rather give it everything for 20 minutes and just go home, to be honest. It’s been highly effective.
I worked at this for a few weeks, and before I knew it - a month had passed and I’d lost my first stone. My life was changing for the better. I eradicated the meal deals and 90% of my meals were now prepared at home. It was going perfectly; but for a lot of people, their lives were about to be turned upside down forever.
Ariana Grande
Despite the on trend highly infectious pop music she makes, in my opinion Ariana Grande is the best female vocalist of our generation — so when I saw that Manchester Arena had odd single front block tickets selling for £40 on SeeTickets, I thought I’d be silly not to go and give her a watch.
I’m the kind of person who will stay right until the end of the show, but the fact that I had parked my car in the arena itself; and in a few minutes thousands of people would be clamouring to get out of the building by foot and by car, was weighing on my mind. I made the decision to leave just as the last song was starting. This decision probably saved my life.
I walked through The City Room hall, where there were a group of people spread around the room, stood in clusters staring at the door, waiting for family and friends to exit the arena. I slipped out of a side door and within minutes I was in my car, with songs from the album blasting out of my speakers, and flying out of the exit. I felt quite smug in a way, knowing the issues everyone else was going to endure trying to get out of the gridlocked car park.
I was just at the end of the road, when I recieved a phone call from one of my best friends Sarah, asking if I was okay. I had no idea the hell I had just avoided by the skin of my teeth.
I was receiving a lot of attention because of this tragedy, but I didn’t deserve it. I was safe, and I was alive.
It was a tragedy, but why is it relevant?
As someone who attended Ariana’s concert, I was invited to attend the One Love Manchester benefit concert at Old Trafford Cricket Ground. It was an incredible, emotional day. At one point a school choir came on stage to sing Ariana’s song My Everything. I was stood there looking at these amazing, talented children on this huge stage, thinking back to the children who had died at the show.
They would never get a chance to live a full and happy life, because they had their life cruelly taken away from them.
So who the fuck was I, to have wasted so much of my life? To have abused my body, to take my health for granted, to complain about every shitty Monday morning?
I am so lucky to be alive. We all are.
As I mentioned, I was already on my way to losing weight, but this was about more. I was one stone down at this point, but that day I made a promise to myself and I made a commitment to every single one of those children whose lives had been taken away, to be a better person. To be a nicer person. To be more considerate. To help people when I can. And to try as hard as I could to get healthy and make the best use of this body I’ve been given.
That night on my way out of the benefit show I did something that you’ll probably think is a bit stupid. I bought myself a One Love Manchester t shirt, that was purposely 2 sizes too small.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve done this before in the past. You see something you like, it doesn’t quite fit but you’ll “fit into it later”. This was different, though. This is not about fitting into something for fashion - this was a statement that I am no longer complacently wasting a life that these children couldn't.
Present Day
With my new found desire to succeed and a new dedication to change, it’s been full throttle all the way, and almost five months in I’m happier, healthier and showing no signs of slowing down.
At the time of writing this post, I’m currently 67lbs down and confidently on my way to 100lbs down. I’m also happy to be back down to my pre car crash weight, as mentioned in part 2.
Another thing I’ve done since then is placed myself under a 3 month selfie ban. I did this because I thought that I may not see as much of a difference in myself if I’m taking photos of myself every day on Snapchat, so I ditched it. I also committed to reducing the amount of time I spend on social media in general, especially Facebook.
I still have a month remaining on my selfie ban, but follow me on Instagram to make sure you catch my first selfie in 90 days!
So, we’ve reached the end.
God, that was a long one wasn’t it? We’ve reached the end of My Big Fat Obese Story. Thank you so much for indulging in my theraputic writing sessions, and if you’re reading this I hope you’ve found value in my story, and taken atleast one thing away with you.
Whatever goal you’re working towards in your life at the moment, just remember - you have to want it enough.
Tom x
