Heart scare inspires pub boss Greg to get on his bike and lose 7st
‘I HAD AN EATING PROBLEM, I LOVE FOOD AND I’D EAT TOO MUCH AND TOO MUCH OF THE WRONG THINGS’
A DERBYSHIRE dad who runs his own micropub has revealed how he lost more than seven stone after getting a serious health wake-up call.
Greg Maskalick, who has been running the Draycott Tap House for five years, tipped the scales at over 25st back in October, 2019.
But the dad-of-two decided to take immediate action to lose weight after he was hospitalised when he suffered minor heart failure.
The 62-year-old said: “It wasn’t major heart failure, it was a very, very minor event, but enough to scare me into doing something.
“The doctors had been saying for years and years that you’ve got to lose weight, but just from hearing the words ‘heart failure,’ I was just like ‘oh my goodness, I’ve got to take this seriously.’
“My recommendation to anybody is don’t do what I did, don’t wait for a major event to happen before you decide to try and lose weight.”
Greg, who is originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the USA, spoke about the struggles he faced before losing weight, explaining the unhealthy diet choices which led him to reach the size he was wearing an XXXXL in T-shirts.
The Ockbrook resident, who has now spent 24 years living in the Derby area, said: “I had an eating problem, I love food and I’d eat too much and too much of the wrong things.
“It was absolutely ridiculous, I’d eat two or three Whoppers from Burger King for lunch, just insane things like that. I used to have lots of cakes and pies, but it was also about how my food was prepared, I’d have lots of butter on things – it all tasted great, but it was all very unhealthy.”
But since getting the motivation needed to lose weight following his health scare, Greg has managed to slim down to just over 18st.
He still hopes to lose a few more stone, but is happy with the amount he has lost so far since joining Nina’s Alvaston Slimming World group in October, 2019.
Greg, who has been running his own brewery, the Draycott Brewing Company, for the last seven years, spoke about the big changes he has made to his diet.
He said: “Now I cook things in a much healthier way, but the food is always still so tasty. It is about coming to terms with what is a healthy portion size. “You can have whatever you want, there’s no such thing as a bad food, it is all about how it’s prepared and how much you can have of it.
“For instance, if you want chocolate, you can have it, but you can only have X-amount a day, rather than two whole bars.
“If you have a sweet tooth, fruit makes a great snack because instead of having a cake you can have grapes, an apple or a banana. I’ve always loved vegetables too, and salads, but what I’ve learned is to not pour mayonnaise dressing all over the salad.
“When you change on to a healthier diet, your body adapts to what you’re eating, and if you go back to that high-fat food – whilst it might taste good – you feel terrible the next day, your body feels awful.”
Another key driver towards his weight loss has been his love of cycling which has led him to set two big goals for later this year.
Greg, who has been married to Gail for 35 years and has two daughters, Hannah, 28, and Kate, 24, said: “Five years ago, I bought myself a really expensive bike, but I couldn’t ride it because I was fat and the tyres would go all the way down when I got on it.
“Once I’d lost 100lb, I then got on the bike and started off with 2.4 miles, after which I had to call my wife to come and pick me up. But now I can do 35 miles in one go, and I biked from Derby to Matlock in November, something I couldn’t have done without taking the weight off.
“I’ve got two goals I’m working towards now, the first is going coastto-coast along Hadrian’s Wall in mid-June.
“I’ve not been in this good a shape for 30 years, but I need to get even fitter to achieve that. And then my next goal for September is cycling from my hometown of Pittsburgh to Washington DC, and that’s a 320mile trip over seven or eight days.”
Greg, who is also a parish councillor for Ockbrook and nearby Borrowash, says both his wife Gail and his Slimming World consultant Nina have played integral roles in supporting him throughout his weight loss journey.
Now he wants to inspire more people to lose weight and reiterate his message to encourage people to do so before they encounter any potentially serious health problems.
Greg, who was chairman of Derby Campaign for Real Ale for two-anda-half years before stepping down around a year ago, added: “My wife has been absolutely amazingly supportive of the whole thing and I couldn’t have done it without her, or my consultant Nina for that matter.
“Like I said, my advice for anybody is to lose weight before any kind of physical symptom forces you into it. You won’t regret it, if I can do it, anybody can do it. I feel amazing and I’ve got so much more energy.”