How footie fan scored amazing slimming goal
National Lottery-funded football league for big fellas helped Stuart Normansell quit bingeing, shed almost six stone and turn his life around
WHEN he talks about life before his weight loss, there’s one word Stuart Normansell returns to again and again. Depressed.
“I was just completely depressed,” confides the 38-year-old from Stockport, Greater Manchester, who, at his heaviest, tipped the scales at 23 stone.
“I was depressed about my weight, depressed about my life, depressed about my job, depressed that I couldn’t shop in normal shops. Just depressed.”
Stuart, who started gaining weight from the age of 11, adds: “It’s a vicious circle. You eat because you’re depressed, so you gain weight. Then you eat again because you’re putting on weight, which further depresses you, and so you eat more. It’s an absolute nightmare.”
Then, in 2017, a friend tagged him in a Facebook post about MAN v FAT, a football league where guys play to enjoy the beautiful game but also to slim down: their weight loss counts towards their team’s goals. The league is one of the many good causes benefiting from the £30million* raised every a week when you play The National Lottery.
With the MAN v FAT league, Stuart, then 21 stone, finally found a way out of the cycle of yo-yo dieting he had fallen into in his late twenties. “I thought I was just going along to play football, but soon the concept clicked and I knew it was for me.”
NEW-FOUND CONFIDENCE
“I was on a team with ten guys who all understood what the others were going through and that changed everything,” explains Stuart.
“Obviously there’s the physical element to it – the fact that you can move about a little bit more, you’re not breathing heavily just going up the stairs, and discovering sport again – but the biggest thing has been the mental side of things, the confidence I have now.
“I’m pretty bolshy, so although I wouldn’t have stood for being bullied at school, my size seriously affected my confidence
HANDSOME COUPLE A much sleeker Stuart with his wife Tiffany for most my twenties. Men tend not to talk about struggling with their weight because we’re full of bravado, claiming nothing can hurt us. I was talking to a guy on the team last week about secret eating and that’s not something a lot of people would understand. But I’d been there and he’d been there as well so we both knew exactly what it was about.”
Secret eating and bingeing meant Stuart’s previous health kicks had always failed. “For me, there was a lot of fast food, bingeing between meals, smashing a pack of biscuits and not thinking twice about it, just because you might be bored, but then feeling guilty and trying to make yourself feel bad by eating even more. It’s a really odd situation.
“I’ve got great mates outside MAN v FAT but bingeing is not something that I would be comfortable discussing with them. But a lot of our guys have done it too, so finally I had a proper support network.”
Since joining the league, Stuart has lost fiveanda- half stone and barely recognises the unhappy twentysomething he once was. In fact, he was so impressed by what the league helped him achieve, he quit his job as a transport manager to work full time for MAN v FAT. “The confidence I have now, compared to how I was four or five years ago – it’s night and day really,” says Stuart.