00:00So my name is Stephen Duffield and at my heaviest I was 398 pounds and over the
00:10course of a year I'd got down to about 11 and a half stone.
00:15Everything was going my way. I had a great job that I just started, just moved
00:21in with a girlfriend and her family that I loved very much, but in the
00:26background I'd always had kind of depression, kind of anxiety and it just
00:30came to a front with stress and stuff. So I had to move out and I had to move back
00:37to mum and dad's. The stress, the anxiety, the depression all came in floods and
00:42sadly as I say as mum and dad took me under the wing my mental health
00:47deteriorated even more. I was put on more and more medication and I had a mental
00:50breakdown and unfortunately I tried to take my own life.
00:54Suddenly overnight mum was taken to hospital, had a brain aneurysm and within 24
01:02hours she died in my and my sister's arms in hospital bed so that absolutely shocked
01:07me. Dad had started to develop quite aggressive dementia so despite all my
01:13mental health challenges I had to look after him for a couple of years as well.
01:16He was then hospitalised and he died in mine and my sister's arms as well so I got very deep
01:26grief to deal with as well. I was having takeaways, I was lying in bed all day drinking beer after
01:36beer after beer. I had to go to the doctors for a blood test or something along those lines, I forget what it was.
01:42They couldn't fit me on the scales, the scales wouldn't go up to how big they couldn't atone
01:48for my weight. So I had to go to a different hospital to get weighed. And yeah it was, it was then that the GP
01:56said look, off the cuff, the trajectory that you're on now, you're looking at 10-15
02:04years left. And it didn't really register with me at the time because I didn't care.
02:09I, you know, I think eating and drinking was a way of slowly killing myself by suicide that way
02:17on reflection. And it wasn't till that Christmas 2022 that I'd gone to a football match with my
02:27two oldest nephews and my brother-in-law. And I got stuck in the turnstiles and like I say it was
02:36quite a poignant moment, one of those tipping points that you have in life that I'd had enough.
02:43It was quite humiliating. So what did I do? I realised I owe it to myself, I owe it to my mum and dad,
02:51I owe it to my sister who's and my brother-in-law who had taken me under the wing to do something
02:59about it. I'd walked before as I say and it had worked to some degree but I'd gained it all back
03:07and doubled up on that. So I thought if I'm going to do it this time I'm going to do it properly. So
03:13the first month I started to commit to this I only walked six miles in that month. But along with that
03:22I started calorie counting and I think by the second month I was doing two or three miles a day
03:29and then it all adds up. As I slimmed down to maintain that level of weight loss I had to walk
03:35further and further, sometimes with the weight on my backpack. And I used the time that I was walking
03:40to listen to different YouTube channels and podcasts. I used walking to centre myself in being present in
03:50nature and appreciating what I had got not what I hadn't got. On reflection December 2023 I weighed myself
04:00and I was 153 pounds. December 2022 that boxing day I was 398 pounds. What I would say is just get out there
04:13one foot in the front of the other. By walking it actually triggers things in your brains. It triggers
04:20feel-good emotions. Even if you're walking a mile a day that mile soon becomes two miles.
04:30I walked. Those calories I owned from walking would go into my budget. I then started looking at fasting.
04:40I then started looking at keto. But before I did all that I counted calories and I walked.
04:47And I laid it up. That's it.
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