I ate my way to diabetes.. it’s my fault son thought I was going to die
When former chef Ken South was told he had Type 2 diabetes, he knew 50 years of bad habits had come home to roost.
Laziness and overeating were to blame but he only changed his lifestyle thanks to his son Charlie.
The eight-year-old believed his dad was about to die after seeing him take six Metformin tablets every day to control his condition.
Distraught Charlie had got the idea from watching his grandad swallowing tablets shortly before dying of cancer the year before.
Ken, 52, said: “When he saw me taking the tablets he burst into tears and ran into his mum’s arms saying, ‘My dad’s going to die’. “It was terrible, indescribable. “It was my fault. It was because of my bad choices and laziness that my son was in that state.
“The thunderbolt struck and I knew I had to change my lifestyle – for my family’s sake.”
Ken, from Folkstone, Kent, was more than 18 stone and his waist measured 54 inches when he was diagnosed at an NHS heath check almost exactly two years ago.
“It’s horrendous looking back,” said Ken, now a teaching assistant at a special needs school.
“I wasn’t eating kebabs and McDonald’s but what I was eating was sheer quantity and calories.”
Every Sunday he scoffed five scones baked by his wife Claire Coller-South, 42, slathered with clotted cream and jam.
His roast beef dinner would be served with 12 spuds and six Yorkshire puddings.
For breakfast he would munch toast as he prepared a plate of sausages, bacon and eggs.
“The diagnosis actually came as a relief,” he said.
“I was guzzling four litres of water every morning and I was always moody. I knew I wasn’t well.”
But Ken is by no means alone. New figures released this week by Diabetes UK show that 3.7million have the illness – double the number 20 years ago, making it our fastest-growing health crisis. A further 12.3million are at increased risk of Type 2, largely preventable through diet and exercise. Ken was warned the disease could lead to a stroke, heart disease, blindness, kidney disease and amputations.
But the real motivation for beating the condition was Charlie’s heartbreaking reaction to his tablets, plus the thought of going blind and not being able to see his son – now 10 – grow up.
He became determined to lose enough weight that he could come off the tablets for good.
“Changing 50 years of bad habits was hard,” he said. “I had to give up eating 10 tonnes of the wrong types of food, and I had to get more active.
“But I thought if I couldn’t manage that, then I wouldn’t be able to hold my head up and say I’m a good dad.”
Ken cut out processed food and stocked up on fruit and veg. He also took up cycling. First he followed his wife and son around their home town on his bike, turning back when he was tired. As his stamina