‘ THE WHOLE FAMILY RUNS TOGETHER’
STEVE WHITE, 39, Newark, Notts Weight before 22st 2lb Weight now 15st 2lb Weight lost 7 stone Kept it off for 3 years
HOW I LOST IT ‘My weight was always an issue but it got worse. I had high blood pressure and in 2014 I had to have an ECG for suspected heart failure. It came back clear but I told my wife, Lisa, that I would change. I worked on my diet first and when I’d lost some weight I started running. Soon Lisa joined me and we started entering events together. It’s funny how people view you; Lisa was walking our kids to school and another kid said to their mother, “Why is that lady walking? She usually runs everywhere, she’s the ‘running lady!”’
HOW I’VE KEPT IT OFF ‘ We still run a lot. There were a couple of months last year when we had an event almost every week. The kids are involved now, and our son Alex, 14, wants to run with us and do some of the bigger events. Even our six-yearold, Melissa, ran the Kids’ Mile at the Donnington 10 Mile. I ran with her after the main race and she pulled out a 10-minute mile, which nearly finished me off! There’s healthy competitiveness between our kids and they all now play sports alongside running – a couple of years ago there was none of that. But now you can’t move in the house for trainers.
Weight-wise I let things relax a little at the end of last year before marathon training kicked in again. We still maintain our approach to healthy eating, although if we do a big run we’ll have a pizza afterwards. It’s all about moderation and earning it.
Most nights we run together, chatting. That’s replaced watching TV with a takeaway. I’m not worried that we’ll slip back to how we were – we enjoy the events, we enjoy the people we see and the circles we mix in. It’s amazing how life changes.’
‘The big thing is you’ve just got to get out and do it. Because of the size we were and the stigma that carries, we initially ran late at night or early in the morning. You think everyone out there is a Mo Farah-type, but they’re not, they’re all shapes and sizes. And once the weight starts coming off there’s a buzz, it becomes like an addiction that feeds itself and it starts taking priority over the takeaways. It pulls your diet into line because you don’t want to go for a run with a belly full of chips. If we run past a chippy now the smell is just a complete turn-off.
The social side of things is massive for us, too. We’ve made friends with the organisers of the Jane Tomlinson events so now the family is known when we turn up. And since the last Runner’sworld piece people now come up and ask us for advice.’