An unemployed man has lost an incredible 20 stone and has now bagged himself both a job and a girlfriend.
Losing a few pounds is already a pretty tricky thing to achieve, but to stay on the wagon until you’ve lost almost two thirds of your body weight is a feat nothing short of impressive.
Dylan Condron from Waterford, Ireland, was almost 33 stone at his heaviest, after piling on the pounds when he was unable to find work.
Unhappy and ashamed by his size, the 21-year-old decided to do something drastic, after a neighbour bought him back a XXXXXXL souvenir t-shirt and it was embarrassingly too tight for him.
He said:
My neighbour brought me a t-shirt back from her holidays and it became the straw which broke the camel’s back.
I looked at it and it was six XL and it was still tight on me. I was thinking at the time fucking hell, jeez, this is too much. I was getting bigger and bigger every day.
Dismayed by this discovery, Dylan decided to take serious action and embarked on his journey to lose his bulk.
Determined, Dylan enlisted the help of his family to help him pay for a personal fitness trainer for three months and switched from his high carb diet to one mainly consisting of protein.
To win his battle with his weight, he walked everyday and kickstarted his morning with five boiled eggs, soya vinegar, coconut oil and cod liver oil.
He recalled:
I hated vegetables – I couldn’t bear them when I started and kept complaining about them.
With my family’s support I kept up the exercise and the new food regime and things began to work and I started to see a change. It was very difficult but I knew it was something I had to do so I kept going.
The training part was easier than the food part.
Since his dramatic weight loss, Dylan has now found a job as a chef and got himself a girlfriend, Amy Kelleher, through dating app Tinder.
She said:
I met him after he lost all the weight and when I was looking back at the pictures it was hard to believe. I couldn’t put into words how proud I was of him.
It’s crazy, even when you look at pictures of him when we first got together it was like he was still losing the weight. It’s definitely a good thing, I’m delighted for him.
Even though Dylan says he was an active child, he explained how he piled on the pounds sat around eating when he couldn’t find a job after leaving school aged 16.
As he turned 19, his weight reached an all time high of 32.8 stone and he found himself shying away in his room, as he became increasingly aware of his morbidly unhealthy lifestyle.
He explained:
I didn’t do anything, I just sat around and I just kept eating and eating. It was comfort eating, it was like a spiral – I eat, I put on weight and I eat more.
I’d always eat crisps and bread and have dinner and then I would have a sandwich before I went to bed. I would have two toasties in the night before breakfast in the morning – a foot-long roll with fried chicken.
Dinner could have been burger and chips or lasagne or maybe a takeaway. I stayed in my room all the time because I was afraid of what people would think of me. Deep down I knew I was dying.
Scarily, the 21-year-old – who now weighs a much healthier 13 stone – believes his eating habits created major health problems, which ultimately could have killed him.
He added:
If I didn’t I would probably would not be here because I was 33 stone and my blood pressure was going through the roof.
I had pains in my head and my chest all the time – it was scary. I never myself having a career because I never went out but now there’s no limits to what I want to do.
Despite his tremendous success in losing weight, Dylan has been left with ‘depressing’ excess skin which really ‘affects his confidence’ so he has set up a Go Fund Me Page to raise $10,000 for surgery.
He has done incredibly well to stick with what must have been a gruelling regime and diet, but hugely proud of what he’s managed to achieve.
Just goes to show what you can do if you put your mind to something…
