How to Drop 30 Kilos in 6 Months and Love Every Minute (Part 1)

How to drop 30 kilos in 6 months and love every minute

Part 1 - Revelation in France

Three years ago, my wife and I decided to call time on our marriage. It was a somber final chat in the kitchen, sharing the last bottle we might ever share. We were sad but it made perfect sense. We had tried but we both needed new things.

My wife said she’d move out down to her parent's house in the country and she asked me what I'd do, I picked something completely random from the top of my idiot head and said “Spain.”

“Spain?” she said and “Spain” I repeated. I have no idea where it came from. I guess I just wanted my departure to be more triumphant, a little more exciting than moving in with parents. Whenever we’d have a fight, that’s what she’d do.

I'd run my consultancy for twenty odd years and over that twenty-odd years, my role had evolved into essentially taking clients to lunch, dinner, shows and spectacles. Super job one might think but it did take its toll on my fitness. By the time I drove off to the channel tunnel, I was eighteen stone and I hadn't played a meaningful game of football in years.

For some reason, a revelation always hits me a while after the event, more autopsy than eureka. Something that seemed so clear suddenly fogs up in deference to the new truth. Of course, she was right, idiot. You always knew that.

Health. Fitness. Breathe new air.

If my automated blurting of “Spain” was taking me to Spain, then let it be Spain. I would return triumphant, slim, toned and sleek and everyone would say how awesome and happy and better-without-her I was..

My new start. My new energy. My mission.

I was more than halfway from Calais, driving to a little French gem called Île de Ré, a gorgeous little island off La Rochelle on the West Coast. I remember the exact spot because the signs had shown their first direction to Le Mans. From that sign, 300km shy of my target, facing three more driving hours, I lost a lump of time I can’t account for.

The next thing I knew there were signs for La Roche Sur Yon. I remembered it from my planning stage because it was pretty close to where I was headed. The sat nav confirmed I was suddenly only an hour from Ile de Rey in what seemed like a blink.

I couldn't tell you why it happened and I have no idea what, if anything, I was thinking in the missing time. Maybe the universe had supplanted a new person into me. Maybe it took me time to reboot. It sure felt like it. At that moment, I couldn’t possibly have imagined anything else. My mission mindset was established in granite.

I’d booked a little room overlooking the harbour at Le Colonnes. I was soon checked in and I unloaded laptop and cables to start the mission I hadn't quite fleshed out yet.

6 foot 1. 18 stone. I fumbled my finger over the Body Mass Index chart, into the blue, sailing past green and into the orange, and just before getting into the red, there it was. My number. My target. 32. I was actually clinically obese. It said it right there. I needed to be 24 to fit into that little green zone of health and fitness. 25% of my body weight was surplus.

This was a holy moley moment as I almost pulled back from the screen.

I closed the laptop and swore foulness on that 25%. My mission had shown its numbers and my plan had started.

That night would be the finest French cuisine a man can enjoy and the next day, everything would change.