I swapped Type 2 diabetes for Level 2 fitness instructor
As Labour’s deputy leader he ballooned to 23 stone. Now the man once mocked as ‘Tommy Two-Dinners’ reveals his new surprise career
‘I lived for 30 years and I was hungry every minute of every hour of every day. I never wasn’t hungry’
TOM WATSON starts to choke up when he talks about missing out on key moments as his children grew up because of the three-decade sugar addiction that saw him balloon to nearly 23 stone. The veteran Labour politician speaks with all the zeal of the sinner who had repented as he discusses with brutal frankness the impact of obesity upon his life.
“By the time I reached 22 stone, I just thought I was a naturally greedy person,” he admits.
“I lived for 30 years and I was hungry every minute of every hour of every day of those 30 years. I never wasn’t hungry. What I know now is that I was having three-hourly sugar highs and crashes.”
The addiction, he says, became overwhelming, to the point where he would pinch other people’s leftovers from restaurant tables to satisfy his cravings. “I remember sitting in a restaurant and a friend coming in and being horrified because I was leaning over the next table to eat some abandoned rainbow cake while staring blankly at my laptop,” he recalls.
Having lost a staggering eight stone, Watson left Parliament after 18 years at the election in December, standing down as Jeremy Corbyn’s deputy and the MP for West Bromwich East.
Now, without a steady income for the first time in two decades and a weightloss memoir to promote, Downsizing: How I lost 8 Stone, Reversed My Diabetes And Regained My Health, Watson has been taking stock of his life and career. He has also written a political thriller, out this autumn.
Known for his dogged pursuit of a variety of causes during his time in Westminster, he remains under a cloud over his ill-advised championing of paedophile fantasist Carl Beech, aka Nick.
It turned out to be the biggest mistake of his career .Watson fuelled public panic and put pressure on the police by using parliamentary privilege to claim the possible existence of a Westminster paedophile ring.
So it was that the reputation of statesmen such as the late Sir Ted Heath, the late Sir Leon Brittan, and others, were dragged through the mud by the Metropolitan Police’s disastrous investigation.
Last July Beech was found guilty of perverting the course of justice and is serving an 18-year jail sentence. Watson, meanwhile, resigned his deputy leadership of the Labour Party in mid-December, after four years, for “a hundred reasons”.
He says: “I’d had a good innings; I’d had 19 years. I didn’t want to leave it too late to quit, until I was unfulfilled. I didn’t want to be that person. I wanted to go on a positive note. When I was elected I thought I knew everything, and now I am retired I realise that I don’t know very much at all…”
Asked about Operation Midland and his involvement – he was described by lawyers for falsely accused former MP Harvey Proctor as a “vehicle for conspiracy theorists” – he is phlegmatic.
“I was asked by Theresa [May] to reassure victims that if they came forward their cases would be investigated, but now I am not an MP there is not a route for me there. That’s done. That’s done,” says Watson, quietly, suggesting understandable embarrassment over his support for Beech’s claims.
That perhaps helps to explain his new focus for 2020. For, along with the eight stone he lost between the summers of 2017 and 2018, a journey about which he writes with surprising vim, Watson also claims to have shed every inch of political ambition.
Today the man once known as “Tommy TwoDinners” is drawn not to hubris but humility. “I set myself two new rules when I left politics: To remain an instrument for good and to work only with relentlessly positive people,” he asserts.
And presumably those who tell the truth, and nothing but.
Having turned his back on frontline politics he might have been expected to burst on to the lecture circuit, or take up a chairmanship somewhere. Maybe in time he will.
However, for now he is training, somewhat bizarrely, to become a “Level 2 gym instructor”. At 52, he
admits to being the oldest person in his class by some stretch.
He is also determined to use his “public platform” to help Britain’s estimated 3.4 million sufferers of Type 2 diabetes to reverse their condition, having been a sufferer himself until he slimmed down from 23 stone and did just that.
His new focus is a far cry from his life in Westminster but he is determined to present himself as a contented man.
He explains that a new opening has come up for him, “doing a proper shift” at a David Lloyd gym. “I’m not sure which gym it will be at yet, but it’s probably going to be at the end of January.”
But will he actually be taking exercise classes?
“Oh I’m not ready to supervise other people yet, I’ll probably just be cleaning machines,” he says.
This is certainly an unusual postpolitical career route for a seasoned senior politician and could be read as further evidence of his determination to transform his life in the wake of damaging events.
It’s certainly a dramatic internal reinvention to rival his weight loss.
“Yes, it’s quite a contrast,” he says carefully. “But that’s where I want to be. I’m very privileged to have a lot of choices.”
He is more candid about the brutal lows that his 30-year sugar addiction caused him.
He recalls enjoying a Bakewell tart at a friend’s house, then raiding the fridge during the night to feast on the remaining three slices, leaving only a trail of crumbs for his hosts the next morning.
“A family member remembers me walking into the house and associating me with the noise of the fridge door squeaking,” he adds. But after a lifetime of being ruled by his sugar cravings, he has adopted the Keto diet.
A doctor he met at a political function confided his concerns that Watson might be a Type 2 diabetic after observing how many times he had gone to the loo. Medical tests proved the doctor right.
Keto has attracted controversy but does seem to work as a means to lose a lot of weight fast, by consuming high calories in place of carbohydrates and fooling the body into burning body fat. “I lost a pound a day because I didn’t feel hungry. I’ve been on fad diets before and felt hungry all the time,” he says. “But I’m not giving a blueprint to anyone. I’m saying how I did it. People have to make their own decisions because the same foodstuff has a different physiological response in different bodies.We can’t have one-size-fitsall in health.”
He is now the determined champion of CGM monitors that give a real-time blood sugar read out, a bit like a Smart meter for the body.
“If you go to the pub on a Friday night, wake up on a Saturday and eat leftover cold pizza, you can see the impact in your reading.”
His Damascene reinvention extends to his role as the father of Malachy, 14, and 11-yearold Saoirse. “I got fit to live longer for them and life is completely different now,” he says. “We go on long walks and I’m more alert and in the moment. Instead of them complaining about me on my phone, I’m complaining about them being on theirs.”
Watson was divorced from their mother, Siobhan, in 2012, but they remain close friends and he now looks after his children every other weekend and for half the holidays.
“I spoke to them before I resigned as deputy leader and asked what they thought,” he says. “They both agreed with it. I told them it could be a big change, and there would be risks in not having a fixed income.”
He adds: “My son remembers me not being able to kick a ball around when he was young. They remember things like that. I really regret that and it saddens me.”
He tells of undertaking the third annual RunForJo last June – in memory of the late MP Jo Cox and crossing the finishing line holding hands with his daughter, as his son cheered them on.
“That was a fabulous dad and daughter moment,” he says. “I only wished I’d done all this a decade earlier – all those wasted years slumped on the sofa.”
He is deeply relieved to have had the opportunity for a second chance with his young teenagers, and is similarly “relieved” that he is not responsible for helping chart his party’s next move.
“Labour needs a very honest internal conversation about why it can’t win elections,” he says. “We don’t go to the pub together, but I’ve never had cross words with Jeremy. Our relationship was always cordial.
“There are some people that would like to attribute responsibility solely to him for Labour’s failure, but that’s unfair. There were many others who signed up to that manifesto. The next leader needs to show what went wrong and what they can do to put it right. That’s a huge responsibility on anyone’s shoulders.”
But not his. He’s looking forward to being a David Lloyd intern.
‘Labour needs a very honest talk about why it can’t win elections. I’ve never had cross words with Jeremy’
● Downsizing: How I lost 8 Stone, Reversed My Diabetes And Regained My Health, by Tom Watson (Kyle Books, £14.99). For free UK delivery, call Express Bookshop on 01872 562310 or visit expressbookshop.co.uk