Caters News/PixabayA man who drank up to three and a half pints of full fat milk each day and had resigned himself to ‘dying alone’ has now found love after losing 21 stone.
Phil Kayes, a self-professed milk addict who weighed more than 37 stone and wore size 8XL clothes at his heaviest, decided to change his ways after medics repeatedly warned him he’d be dead by 40.
The 46-year-old, from Bangor, Northern Ireland, began his weight-loss journey three years later in 2017, and within two-and-a-half years had dropped eight clothes sizes and weighed just 15st 11lb.
Caters NewsPhil, a civil servant, even had the confidence to start dating after his massive weight loss, and has since met the love of his life – 49-year-old Nicole Mulholland.
He says he can ‘barely remember a time’ that he wasn’t overweight, although it wasn’t until he went to university that he ‘put on a lot of weight really quickly’.
As a student and in the years since, he would drink at least two litres of milk every day (three and a half pints), stating: ‘I had enjoyed drinking milk since a young age, so when I got home from work milk would be the first thing I would reach for.’
That wasn’t the only thing he would reach for though; he would also binge on junk food and would eat seven takeaways a week. ‘When I went to university, I had no idea how to cook and I used all of my student grant in the student union bar and on takeaways,’ he explained.
Caters NewsPhil said he ‘didn’t take any notice’ of how much weight he was putting on because he ‘didn’t even have a set of scales’.
However, he started having panic attacks at the thought of socialising because he ‘knew [he] was so big and was conscious that anywhere [he] went [he] was the biggest person in the room’. He also couldn’t stand up for more than an hour because he’d blown the cartilage in his knee ‘from being so heavy’.
He said:
I’d resigned myself to the fact I was going to die at that weight after I spent the last 15 years being told I would be lucky to see 40. I also resigned myself to being single because I didn’t see myself as a viable prospect.
I hadn’t even looked for a relationship or thought about dating for a decade – I wouldn’t let anyone get close to me because I had such low self-worth.
Caters NewsIn July 2017, Phil decided to change his ways after worrying he might die before his mum Jennifer – who had terminal stomach cancer – lost her own battle.
He started Slimming World and cut all of the junk from his diet, swapping takeaways for homemade meals and swapping his pints of milk for water and sugar-free cordial.
When his mum passed away in October 2017 – three months after Phil had started his weight-loss journey – he had already lost five stone and was determined to keep going.
As the weight fell off him, Phil’s outlook on life changed and he gained confidence he never had before. So much so, he met Nicole on Bumble in November 2018 and the pair have been loved up ever since, moving in together in February last year.
Caters NewsPhil explained:
Previously I portrayed this false confidence to friends and put up a front, but now I feel like I actually am the man I pretended to be for 20 years.
I’ve met the love of my life and it has given me a renewed purpose and a reason to keep going and stick to my new healthy lifestyle for her.
Friends walk past me in the street because they don’t recognise me. I understand because I don’t even recognise myself in the mirror, but it makes me feel amazing.
I feel like I have just started living now at 46. I can’t believe how much my life has changed, from accepting that I was going to die alone to living with Nicole. Losing weight was the best decision I have ever made.
Caters NewsNow, Phil even runs his own ‘fitspiration’ Instagram account to help others on their weight-loss journey, featuring his healthy meals with veg from Nicole’s homegrown allotment.
What an incredible achievement. Congrats Phil!
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A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).