Punisher fights for survival
A sporting enforcer is turning his life around thanks to a supersized boot camp, writes Lee Umbers.
BEING a Heavyweight Champ is a matter of life and death for Philip Pun Tele’a.
Lying in a hospital bed, his leg agonisingly swollen with cellulitis and the powerful frame that once menaced rivals on the football field now blown to a morbidly obese 295kg, the 30-year-old was given a stark warning.
Unless he turned his life around, Tele’a says a doctor told him, ‘‘the next time he’s gonna see me in there is down in the morgue’’.
The former rising sport star says he tried to take the caution with a toughness that earned him the gridiron nickname ‘‘The Big Punisher’’.
But as soon as the doctor left his room, ‘‘I just started breaking down and had a little prayer to God. I told Him, ‘Please help me’.’’
Hope came when Tele’a turned to David Letele, the corporate boxer-turned-health campaigner who has helped thousands lose weight and gain fitness through his Buttabean Motivation boot camps and online programmes.
That life-changing decision, in CHRIS MCKEEN / FAIRFAX NZ January, was a first step back to wellness for Tele’a. He has begun to shed the kilos, can now perform demanding bodyweight exercises and walk up hills, and is regaining confidence and joy where once he was so depressed he felt ‘‘like giving up on life sometimes’’.
It was also the beginning of the now 30-something strong Buttabean Heavyweight Champs – a twice-weekly free-of-charge boot camp in South Auckland, which has recently expanded to West Auckland.
‘‘Most of the team will be high 100kgs/low 200kgs,’’ Letele says. ‘‘It’s not just about physical fitness. This journey is all about being mentally strong, because it hurts and it’s so easy to give up.’’
As well as workouts, the bootcamps emphasise diet – and the first thing Letele tells them is to cut back on soft drinks.
In Tele’a’s case, that used to be around 4.5 litres a day – washing down fast food meals he estimates were costing him $60-80 a day.
Replacing fizzy drinks with water and ditching fast food has now slashed his food bill to around $120 a week. ‘‘You can’t say you can’t afford to eat healthy when you went to the drivethrough and spent about $20 just for that one meal. I used to go broke eating the way I was.’’
Tele’a piled on the weight after lymphedema in his right leg forced him to leave his factory job and put paid to any plans to reignite his American Football career. A prop for Mt Albert Grammar’s 1st XIII, he started playing gridiron for the Metro Lions American Football Club while still at school.
His physical presence, around 160kg and ‘‘pretty fit for a big guy’’, saw him making an impact in the offensive line.
He made the Auckland and then New Zealand junior sides before injuring his left knee, he says.
Then he was diagnosed with lymphedema – fluid retention and tissue swelling from a compromised lymphatic system. Infections have led to cellulitis, which has seen him being bedridden for up to a fortnight a time and spells in hospital. The pain so intense at times, he wished he could ‘‘just chop my leg off’’.
He says comfort eating after the deaths of his mother in 2013 and an elder brother the following year took his weight towards 300kg. ‘‘I wouldn’t want to go out to places in public. It was embarrassing going out – always being the biggest person in the room, just getting people staring.’’
But since joining the Heavyweight Champs his fitness and confidence have turned around.
‘‘I’m always out there with people now, meeting up with friends and going to the movies with family – rather than just being stuck at home and trying to lock myself away from this world.’’
Tele’a is aiming to get down to 200kg by Christmas. And eventually 120kg – ‘‘I’d like to be another Dave!’’
Letele, who dropped 90kg from 210kg in two years, has 8000 ‘‘Buttabeaners’’ in his Buttabean Motivation Facebook group and runs the Heavyweight Champs boot camps free of charge. Funding comes from Counties Manukau Sport. He has just started another Heavyweight Champs group in West Auckland.
Support has also come from the Manukau Urban Maori Authority, and Letele has met government officials in New Zealand and Samoa about his public health campaigns.
He has retired his corporate boxing persona – the Brown Buttabean – with a record of 18 wins and 3 losses. ‘‘Now I just continue my fight against obesity.’’
‘ I used to go broke eating the way I was.’ PHILIP PUN TELE’A