A 25-year-old man who was once called ‘potato’ by his friends due to his round shape, is now out competing in bodybuilding shows. In 2013 Dominic went to Leeds University to study, but found himself constantly partying. A life of partying and takeaways led to Dominic becoming 240lbs at his heaviest. Dominic began bodybuilding and has lost 70lbs overall.
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00:00 At my heaviest I weighed approximately 240 pounds,
00:04 but it got to the stage where I was too scared to step on the scales.
00:07 My nickname at the time was Potato.
00:10 You know, I was round, I was living such an unhealthy, unsustainable life.
00:14 I had no choice but to lose weight.
00:16 I went from being Potato to a classic physique competitor winning bodybuilding shows.
00:28 The happiest time of my life was actually when I was at school.
00:31 So my GCSE years when I was 15 and 16, that's when I was playing rugby for England,
00:37 I was playing for the South Sharks, playing for Warrington Wolves.
00:39 You know, I was involved in a number of professional teams.
00:42 You know, yeah, I was bigger.
00:43 You know, if I wasn't a rugby player, you would have said I was a bit overweight.
00:46 You know, I didn't have a huge belly, but at the same time I didn't have a six pack.
00:51 I didn't actually drink before university.
00:54 Before university I was living the life of an international rugby player.
00:57 Training camps every weekend, no house parties and stuff growing up.
01:00 And then all of a sudden I came to university,
01:01 wasn't pursuing professional rugby anymore.
01:03 And I came to Leeds, which is a huge student, huge like party city.
01:08 So it was like straight in the deep end.
01:10 I kind of just went wild.
01:10 I was going out a minimum of four times a week.
01:13 And I basically was just drinking and partying more than anything else.
01:16 That's all I really did for two years.
01:18 I would eat an awful lot of takeaways, a lot of fried chicken, a lot of pizzas.
01:22 So my favourite things to binge on back in the day was probably Kit Kat Chunkies.
01:26 So this was one of my old rugby jerseys.
01:30 Got this, this was actually from when I was 16.
01:34 And it's still, still massive to excel.
01:38 It's flipping huge.
01:39 When I was playing rugby, I used to think, oh yeah, it's okay.
01:42 You know, I need to be big.
01:43 I need to be strong.
01:44 And, but then as soon as rugby stopped, it became much harder.
01:48 And that's when I realised I'm not a rugby player anymore.
01:51 I'm just, I'm just an overweight guy.
01:54 I was living with the rugby guys.
01:55 They used to call me Potato.
01:57 So for my 20th birthday, they got me a personalised rugby vest.
02:00 You know what?
02:02 I didn't really like being called Potato.
02:04 And it was one of those where I kind of just had to accept it and embrace it.
02:07 That was going to be my nickname.
02:08 And in all fairness, I look back at photos now and I was round.
02:11 I looked eerily like Potato.
02:14 I can't believe that I used to live like that.
02:18 You know, there were so many like red flags that I was living such an unhealthy,
02:22 unsustainable life.
02:23 I was unconfident and conscious of being overweight for a long time.
02:28 I always like was looking at short, quick fixes and it just never happened.
02:32 And then my third year of university, I went and studied at Hong Kong Baptist University.
02:36 So I got out of that environment of partying all the time, drinking and takeaways.
02:40 I had no choice but to lose weight.
02:42 So my weight loss first started when I was out in Hong Kong.
02:48 I didn't really know what the best way to train was.
02:50 Or what I wanted to be doing in the gym.
02:52 I just knew something was better than nothing.
02:55 So I would set my alarm each morning, get up and go get a workout in.
02:58 And it just started slowly over the course of a year.
03:01 And that's, you know, creating a bunch of new habits.
03:04 And I changed my lifestyle was the big thing.
03:06 I came back from that year and the first thing everybody said to me when they saw me was,
03:09 "Damn, Dom, you've lost weight. You look good."
03:11 I wanted to fill out shirts.
03:13 I wanted to be big.
03:14 I wanted to look muscular.
03:15 You know, I wanted to look like a bodybuilder.
03:17 So I started to slowly put on weight.
03:19 But this time it was the right weight.
03:21 I was bulking up and I was filling out.
03:23 And it just snowballed from there.
03:24 I fell in love with the process.
03:25 And three seasons deep now.
03:27 Building for next year.
03:29 At my heaviest, I weighed approximately 240 pounds.
03:34 But it got to the stage where I don't actually have an exact figure for my heaviest weight.
03:38 Because I was too scared to step on the scales.
03:41 How has my body changed?
03:42 It's hard not to just answer, "I've put on muscle and lost fat."
03:46 The weight that I've lost altogether from my heaviest to my lowest is 70 pounds.
03:51 My daily workout for most of the year is just about an hour to an hour and a half of weights every day.
04:00 So your body and your muscles don't know if you're lifting a barbell, dumbbell, resistance bands,
04:08 a rucksack full of textbooks or water bottles.
04:10 It just knows that it's got resistance against it and it's being made to work hard.
04:14 So it works at our advantage at the moment.
04:17 And you can use anything.
04:18 Lift bottles of water, a rucksack full of textbooks.
04:21 Lift your dog, lift your girlfriend if you have one.
04:23 "Wow, I've got my textbooks."
04:25 A healthy lifestyle is really important to me.
04:29 I was really miserable and I wasn't happy when I didn't have this healthy lifestyle.
04:33 I didn't have any drive, I didn't have any ambition.
04:35 I wasn't bringing anything to the table.
04:37 I was just going out drinking.
04:39 A lot of people say bodybuilding is a vain sport.
04:41 But these people don't realise you get a lot of positives from bodybuilding.
04:46 It teaches you how to hold yourself accountable, to work for yourself,
04:49 to be your own source of motivation, to work hard.
04:53 When I started my Instagram page as a way of keeping accountable,
04:56 a lot of my friends laughed at it and sniggered about it.
04:58 And I know a lot more laugh behind my back.
05:00 Then all of a sudden, very quickly, they were coming to me for advice.
05:03 "How did you do this?"
05:04 So my confidence has changed massively.
05:07 I was so self-conscious for my body.
05:09 I would go to uni in baggy hoodies and baggy track suits.
05:13 I never wore jeans, I never wore normal, fashionable clothes.
05:16 I didn't feel like I looked good in them.
05:18 I wasn't happy with the person I was.
05:20 And then all of a sudden, I had the direction.
05:22 I knew who I was, I knew what I'm passionate about,
05:24 what I want to achieve in life.
05:26 What advice would I give to someone starting out their new journey?
05:29 The advice I would give to somebody is fall in love with the process.
05:32 Because the results will come eventually, but it's a slow process.
05:35 You never hear anybody say they were a bad athlete.
05:38 You never hear anybody say they regretted a workout,
05:41 even if it was a bad workout.
05:43 They never regret it.
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