OT leader Chris McElligott tells RTÉ LifeStyle about his amazing weight loss tips, future goals and why he's defending Karl Henry's comments.
We can the physical change that Operation Transformation has had on your life but what has the biggest change for you been?
I suppose the food I'm now eating has been the biggest change for me and obviously the healthier lifestyle that I have going forward, they're the biggest changes for me. I didn't find them easy at the start, you know, week two and three, that's when I really came into my own with the cooking and stuff like that. The transformation from then to where I am now, cooking my own meals and preparing my own meals the day before and stuff like that. I'd never have seen it happening.
We saw early on in the show that you had to get your prosthetic fixed to suit your weight loss, will that continue to happen if you keep losing weight?
Yeah, what happens is, the weight I was losing if I'm consistent with losing weight, which no doubt I'm going to be, every time I'm going to have to. What they do is, when the leg I have at the moment is so big it can't be adjusted anymore, well then we'll get rid of it. It's just the top part they get rid of because everything else still works properly so they just make a new cast for it and make sure it's comfy and fits well and then it everything back onto it once it's done, get walking again.
Did you know when you applied to Operation Transformation that this would be something to consider?
Yeah, I did, but I didn't think... I actually didn't think that I'd be at this massive weight loss that I'm at at the moment, I thought I'd be the one with trouble losing weight. You know, I'm not as mobile with the running part of it but definitely the walking part of it, the resistance work and the food plan and stuff.
"I feel so much younger, I feel so much energy, I feel very vibrant you know?Everything's just changed which is fantastic because I wouldn't have seen that happening six weeks ago"
You celebrated your success with a tattoo, that got you into a bit of trouble?
Karl took a lot of stick from the social media side of things over the fact that he had a go at me, you know, about the tattoo but he one hundred percent was right like like. I didn't foresee the, you know, not being able to swim. I never foresaw that because I got a tattoo before and I was in the pool the next day.
I didn't foresee it and you know I think Karl was saying, he said it to me off show, 'I knew you'd take it the right way' and he also said to me 'I'm not having a go at you but I'm saying it would have made more sense to actually find out first, would it prevent you from doing anything before you got the tattoo' and that's all he was doing. He was just safeguarding me and minding me to make sure I would be in the best physical condition for the 5k.
How are you finding the balance of getting everything done at work, home and in health?
The most important thing that I found, listening to the other leaders as well, which I've included myself in is having an alarm on your phone that's going to remind you to make sure that you have that snack in between your breakfast and lunch and in between your lunch and dinner. So that when it comes to dinner you have enough food in your body that there's no, I suppose, there's no necessity to eat a full dinner.
Most of us don't eat anything in between and when it comes to dinner time we eat everything that's on the plate. I suppose it's one of those things where they say to you, you know, when you're at eighty percent full, when your body feels about eighty percent full, look at what you're eating and think to yourself 'do I really want to eat the whole lot of that?'.
Once you reach your goal weight, what's coming your way?
The main goal was obviously to lose a bit of weight and start focusing on a healthier lifestyle but the main goal, for me, was to make sure that I was going to be fit enough to start competing again with the Irish Amputee Football Association and hopefully make the international squad to go to Turkey in the European Championships in October.
Operation Transformation airs Wednesdays and Thursdays at 8.30pm on RTÉ One.
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