Just MINUTES after his gastric bypass, how a showbiz impresario’s diabetes was reversed
AS SIDE-EFFECTS go, losing 4st and miraculously transforming your health in the process has to be up there with the very best. But for Jonathan Shalit, 55, talent manager extraordinaire, the side-effect was the whole point of having weightloss surgery in the first place.
‘I’m in showbusiness — the business of show — so I’ve always been very aware that appearances matter,’ he says.
‘But if people think I had a gastric bypass out of vanity, they’re very much mistaken.
‘Look at my life six months ago. Sure, I was 4½ st overweight, but that didn’t stop me marrying a gorgeous girl. My business had exploded to become a global success. I was happy with my life.’
So why take the drastic step of completely ‘replumbing’ your digestive tract? Why not simply go on a diet?
Because Jonathan had a far more significant issue in his life: diabetes.
Though its effects were still relatively mild, ten years after being diagnosed Jonathan was experiencing signs that his condition was worsening, with pains in his feet and changes in his eyes linked to blood vessel and nerve damage.
His wife Katrina, who’d watched her father lose a leg and ultimately die from the same condition 15 years before, was adamant: the time had come to take action.
‘I am so lucky to have been diagnosed with diabetes in this day and age, rather than 20 years ago,’ says Jonathan. ‘Because a miracle cure really does exist. The gastric bypass has reversed my diabetes, helped me lose all my excess weight and made me feel amazing. I just wish I’d done it years ago.’
Gastric bypass surgery, for reasons which remain a mystery, has the effect of reversing the condition almost instantly.
SOUNDS too good to be true? Jonathan’s story is persuasive. ‘Within an hour of having gastric bypass surgery I was sitting up in bed doing emails,’ he says. ‘But the most incredible thing was my blood sugar levels were already completely back to normal.
‘This was straight after the operation. There couldn’t have been any weight loss at that time — we’re talking minutes here, not weeks.
‘Since then, I’ve gone from having three injections [of insulin] and eight pills a day to just four pills, which I take more for maintenance than anything else. Within three months I had dropped 4st without trying. I had to throw away ten made-to-measure suits which cost £1,500 each.’
Jonathan admits he’s carried excess weight since childhood.
‘At breaktime at school I’d go to the tuck shop for a cheese roll and a can of Coca-Cola, then eat a big lunch an hour or so later.
‘But I was also extremely fit. I won the London school crosscountry championship and played rugby for the school. I carried on that way for years.’
Then, 11 years ago, he started getting pains in his chest. Two of his arteries were blocked and he underwent surgery to have them opened up with stents.
‘At that point, I was diagnosed as a diabetic,’ says Jonathan. ‘It didn’t come as too much of a surprise because my dad has diabetes.’
But although he was put on medication, Jonathan ‘carried on pretty much the same as before’.
‘I thought I felt absolutely fine. You see, in every other aspect of my life I was doing great.’ He says he ate healthy food, but adds: ‘The problem was I was also eating a lot of rubbish on top of that. And all the time I had Katrina telling me that I needed to do something about my diabetes.’
As his wife explains, her father, Peter Clayton, had been an Olympic swimmer in 1948. ‘But then diabetes destroyed his health,’ she says.
‘I remember when his little toe fell off, and he said: “Oh, well, I didn’t need it anyway.” Then it spread up his ankle and gangrene set in.
‘I could see all the signs in my husband, history repeating itself.’
The turning point came in October, when a friend recommended Jonathan try a new blood sugar monitor, Freestyle Libre. This is a small adhesive patch that provides instant readings when scanned with a small handset.
‘Suddenly I could see just how much my blood sugar levels spiked. Sometimes they were off the scale.’
‘In the old days I wouldn’t have cared because I was on my own; as long as I died after my mum and dad, I wasn’t really bothered. But everything changed seven years ago when I married Katrina. Now I have an incredible wife and two fantastic stepdaughters. I want to be around for them.
‘Eventually it dawned on me that if I didn’t do something about my diabetes I was probably going to knock 15 years off my lifespan.’ With his stepdaughter Jessica’s wedding on the horizon in May this year, he went to see Ahmed Ahmed, a consultant bariatric surgeon at Charing Cross Hospital in London. ‘I thought it would be nice to drop a couple of stone for Jessica’s big day,’ he says. But the real motivation was his diabetes.
Jonathan was told that with a BMI of 37 and diabetes, he qualified for NHS treatment. But he opted to go private, paying £22,000 for a two-day stay in hospital.
The surgery was booked in for February 21, exactly three months before Jessica’s wedding.
Given his packed diary, it was no small gesture. The week of the operation, Jonathan missed the Baftas and the Brits, while a private dinner with the Prime Minister had to be postponed.
Gastric bypass surgery involves creating a small pouch at the top of the stomach to reduce the amount you can eat. This pouch is directly connected to the small intestine, bypassing the duodenum. It’s this bypass that’s thought to be behind the extraordinary reversal of type 2 diabetes, possibly because it affects the hormones. ‘We know that after surgery we immediately see a rise in a hormone called GLP-1, which is intimately related to insulin, and a decrease in ghrelin, the hunger hormone,’ explains Mr Ahmed. ‘Whatever the reson, this is hugely significant because we are seeing improvements in diabetes completely independent of weight loss.’ Surgery, of course, is not the only option. Research has shown that a strict 800 calorie-a-day diet can lead to significant weight loss and improvement in diabetes. But Mr Ahmed says that as well as the instant drop in blood sugar, gastric surgery leads to a major improvement in gut bacteria, ‘which is of immense importance to health’. Having fluctuated between 16st and 17st — Jonathan is 5ft 7in — within three months, he’d dropped to 12st and is now 11st 9lb.
JONATHAN’S eating habits have also been transformed. ‘ In the past I lived on full- fat cappuccinos and cola drinks,’ he says. ‘ But I’ve completely lost my cravings for sugar. Now I really look forward to a cup of tea with skimmed milk.’
‘I still eat in wonderful restaurants, but when my portion arrives, I cut it in half and send the rest back.’
‘I also sleep so much better,’ he says, adding that his energy levels (‘I was already like the Duracell bunny, even with raging diabetes’) are now through the roof.
The only noticeable downside is that he feels the cold.
‘Before I sweated a lot — I made my colleagues turn the air conditioning up to maximum. Now, even in the summer, I sleep in a T-shirt, pyjama top and a jumper.’
His celebrity friends and clients of his talent management business ROAR Global have certainly noticed the difference.
‘Michael McIntyre came bounding over to me and said I was half the man I used to be. Simon Cowell couldn’t believe his eyes.
‘Dame Joan Collins calls me her “slim manager”, which begs the question what she called me before!’ he jokes.
‘The only clue to how I used to be is a tiny sag on my chin, where the other chins used to be. It reminds me how lucky I am.’