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Scott Rae

before weight loss
after weight loss

At the age of 18, I stood at 6’3” and weighed around 14 stone. I was a little bit heavier than some of my peers and I allowed myself to be persuaded that I was fat when I was not. As a result, I “gave up” on myself for a long time – 20 or 25 years – during which time I had a lack of self-respect and low self-esteem. After that, I let myself get out of shape and gained a lot of weight. I was convinced that I didn’t care about how much I weighed or how fit I was. In some ways, I suppose I gave up on life. I hated the sight of my face and was sometimes horrified when I caught sight of myself in a mirror.

When I reached my mid-forties I began to think that unless I changed my ways, my future held in store such ailments like diabetes, heart disease, knee, leg, and back problems. A couple of times I tried “low-carb” diets, which were short-lived but seemed fairly successful as, after a few weeks, my clothes felt a bit looser and I felt smaller.

A few years ago I was working with a guy who, after gaining weight during the festive season, said that he intended to lose some weight. I expressed doubt that it could be done “on-demand” like that, but he convinced me that he could do it and if I wanted, so could I. Through making minor changes to my diet and paying a few visits every week to a gym, I managed to lose about a stone. For various reasons, I moved on to another job, got out of the exercise habit, regained some bad food habits, and put the weight back on.

After a couple of years of once again feeling self-conscious about my size, I decided to try and lose weight again. I tried running with the help of a “couch to 5k”-type app on my phone. I didn’t lose a huge amount of weight but at least it got me going in the right direction. At work one day, I noticed that a colleague called Ian looked a lot smaller since I last had seen him. He told me had lost a lot of weight and that he’d had his life turned around by DMC Fitness. I went along for a free taster session and signed up for my first block of training.

In about 8 months, I lost three stone and went from 38-inch waist jeans to 34-inch (which to be honest are feeling a bit loose on me nowadays). Now I can go into a shop and buy jackets off the shelf, which I couldn’t do for years because they never stocked my size. More important than the weight loss, my character seems to have changed for the better. My wife has told me that I’m now more positive and self-confident – not that she didn’t like me before; she now just sees a “better version” of me! I agree – I look better, I feel lighter and more agile. I feel better about myself.

As I approach my 50th birthday, I can say with some confidence that my life has improved vastly, thanks in no small part to my coach Grant and the crew at DMC Fitness. At present, I’m taking a break from training with DMC, but I would like to lose a couple more stone (if I managed that I’d be happy – the challenge from then on would be to keep the weight off), so it’s highly likely that I’ll be back knocking on the door at DMC soon.