Exactly How This Man Lost 20 Stone (and Saved His Life) In Less Than a Year
“Before losing the weight, I didn’t have a life,” says Dibsy McClintock. “I just existed. I couldn’t fit in a car, I couldn’t use public transport, I couldn’t get in the bath… I couldn’t even tie my own shoelaces.”
Dibsy had always been big, but it was only in his mid-twenties that the problem became more urgent. In late 2018, he was hospitalised due to atrial fibrillation, a heart condition. At 40st, his weight made surgery too much of a risk – “If they put me to sleep, I wouldn’t have woken up” – and he was issued an ultimatum: lose the 10st required to perform the procedure, or don’t expect to be around much longer.
That’s when he met Mike Hind (above, pictured left), a PT specialising in body transformations and owner of a local meal-prep company. Mike agreed to take him on, providing his food and training free of charge. “He could barely walk,” Mike recalls of their first meeting. “We had a chat and his mum just broke down. It was heart-wrenching. I said, ‘I’ll do this, but you need to give me 100%.’” Dibsy’s goal? To lose 20 stone in a year.
Dibsy had consulted with NHS dietitians and personal trainers without success. As Mike puts it, “Nobody had worked out the root cause: he was addicted to food.”
At first, Dibsy says he struggled with the exercise and dramatic drop in calories: “I’d get aches and pains. It was absolutely brutal.” But he persevered, and the weight started to fall away. As it did, he and Mike set targets unrelated to the scales: climbing Ben Nevis, completing the Great North Run.
As impressive as these feats are, many of Dibsy’s biggest milestones were considerably less Instagram-worthy. “Getting into a car with a seat belt – I’d never been able to do that before!” he says.
Late last year, Dibsy hit his 20st target after 358 days, one week ahead of schedule. “My family doesn’t have to worry about me any more,” he says.
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