Rick’s story

It’s Rick from Be Strong, I just wanted to share my story with you, about how I lost over 11 stones in weight after living most of my life as a bigger person.

I topped the scales at 25st, and had many attempts at losing weight, but would always put what I lost back on, with more! I reached an all time low when one of my closest friends secretly met with my mother to discuss me. He was concerned that I was so unwell, due to my weight and lack of any form of exercise, that I would die prematurely.

In early 2013, still hugely overweight, I was speaking to a lady who suffered a massive personal tragedy. I agreed to run a 10 km race in Burnley, Lancashire, to raise awareness for her charity. I had raised the hopes of my family over the years with broken promises of exercise and weight loss. However, this was one lady I could never, ever let down. I have my own reasons for this – “she’s just a very special person.”

I am now over 10st lighter than at my heaviest, have reduced from a 54″ waist to 34″ and I ran every step of that 10 km road race in Burnley. I’ve since established a Couch to 5k group which has seen over 3,800 people learn to run for 5km. I’ve also successfully completed five full marathons.

I have experienced almost every ‘diet’ on the market, and had certainly ‘got the tshirt’ in that respect! There are no quick wins that work in the longer term, it’s simply a matter of eating a balanced plate of food, in the correct portion size and ensuring that you fully understand how many calories you need to consume each day to achieve your sensible weight loss goal. If you can combine this with any form of exercise you will see success.

You could say I’ve started to live again. My only regret is a cliché, I should have done this 20 years ago! I set up Be Strong with Rachel, because I wanted to help as many people as possible achieve the things that we have. To become healthier and fitter, and maintain a healthy weight, long term.

We used to run Be Strong as a hobby, but it very quickly became a passion, and Rach and I decided we had to do it for our ‘proper job’ so in 2018, we gave up our well paid jobs in local government, to take Be Strong onto the next stage, and work on it full time.  And it is the best decision we ever made!

We love to help people and Be Strong can help you to be the person you want to be. Don’t wait like I did, ‘be strong’ and sign up today. I promise you won’t regret it.  Check out our tool at mybestrong.com/discover, to help you decide which of the amazing Be Strong programs will help you achieve your goals. We can’t wait to help you!