What Losing 40lbs Did for My Mind and Body
By Gareth A Davies 

Core strength: Gareth Davies cycling near his home in Essex - Credit: Andrew Crowley

In August 2019, I had a heart attack. Looking back, it was a blessing. I was lucky. At 54, I faced my own mortality and it transformed my life. The journey to now has taken me from 15st 6lbs to 12st 12lbs, the same weight I was when I was 30. I lost almost 40lbs. It was a process, creating good habits around diet and exercise, which began in lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Facing your own mortality is a chastening experience, and I fall into that typical male category of thinking I could carry on regardless. I love my work as a fight sports correspondent for The Telegraph, radio stations and on television, but it requires stamina, adapting to very long hours, and different time zones. I’ve worked in 100 cities in 42 countries over 30 years and I had never listened to my body: I’d survived on little sleep and lots of adrenalin. Emotionally, I was a mess too: my wife and I divorced in 2017, my marriage having fallen apart over the previous year.

In the summer of 2019, there had been a stitch in my left shoulder above my heart for about eight weeks, I’d travelled and worked in LA, New York and Las Vegas at fights, hurried back for a short holiday trip to Nice and had readied myself for another sojourn to the US to interview heavyweight world champion Tyson Fury. On Friday night, unbeknown to me at the time, I had a heart attack. I was due to be on the road again two days later, and got through a torrid night of chest pains by taking painkillers. So many of us don’t reach out for help when we really need it. I felt dreadful, but thought it was simply an injury. I’ve had plenty of sports injuries in my time and I put it down to a torn muscle. But my arms were heavy so I visited my doctor on Monday.

She examined me and said: “Did you drive here? Well, you won’t be driving back. We’re calling an ambulance and you’re going straight to hospital.”

My heart was only working at 60 per cent. If I hadn’t gone to the doctor and caught a flight to Vegas as planned, I would be dead. This was the moment I awoke to the fact that our “life force”, however strong we may feel, cannot overcome the vessel that carries it.

When my brilliant specialist Dr Paul Kelly put a stent into my heart – one artery had become blocked – my life changed. At first, I felt very vulnerable; I was worried I would have another heart attack. But when I returned to see Dr Kelly, he told me: “If you get fit, you could have another 25 healthy years.”

Since then, I have changed my life, creating “me time” and doing things for myself that are beneficial. Exercise and diet were key. I was quite pleased with myself, pulling my mountain bike out of the garden office after it had gathered cobwebs for years, to make a start on short rides. I’ve now become accustomed to four to five rides a week of between 10 and 25 miles. Losing weight and controlling the anxieties of a very busy working life was no quick fix either. But the system I developed – I didn’t really take any formal advice other than attending gentle exercise classes post-operation at my local hospital – has grown organically.

Lockdown helped. I was abroad with my work less, I began cooking every day and I haven’t had a takeaway for two years. Finding exercise I enjoyed started with cycling, discovering places in my environs of north Essex that I never knew about. Being out in nature for those hours on my bicycle lessened my stress, allowed me to think and let my body be active.

I discovered paddleboarding in the summer of 2020, and it was a revelation. Being on the water was excellent for my physical core and, as I progressed from the gentle meandering rivers of Cambridgeshire to the estuary around Leigh-on-Sea, I found the sea had great healing qualities.

It has become part of my new, post-heart attack lifestyle. My VW Touareg is now replete with two hybrid cross bikes and two inflatable paddleboards. They are essentials in my life along with the mobile phone and laptop that accompany me everywhere. Days off are spent cycling and paddleboarding. I often park a few miles from a press conference or fight event and cycle there from the car, which saves time and the stress of finding parking.

My diet has, alongside the 10 to 15 hours a week I cycle or paddleboard, brought about the weight loss and change in my physical shape. Previously, I was an emotional eater, an anxiety eater – largely triggered by work stress, and by my divorce. I found comfort in eating when I wasn’t hungry. I still feel it sometimes, but when I shop I limit the sweet things I’m getting to have at home to mini-meringues, mochis and some fruit. If I do over-indulge, exercise will always follow.

Cooking an evening meal every day has become a ritual. I rarely eat red meat. My diet is mainly seafood and the best organic vegetables and salads – salmon, white fish, crab, samphire grass, salads, fresh pasta, and bread at a minimum. My girlfriend, Julie, who I met last year at my local farm shop, eats with me every night and has lost 2st as a result. I still enjoy my favorite tipple – tequila – but have learnt to sip and not slug it down. Long boozy lunches are gone. Takeaway food is no longer a consideration. I’ll wait until I get home, even if hungry. Sometimes, If I’m out all day on assignment, I prepare a meal to take with me. Previously, a Red Bull and quick snacks from a petrol station were the norm.

Overall, there is much less anxiety in my life: if I feel it rising, the bike is there, and the river or the sea calls to me. I’ve just ordered drysuits for me and Julie, as I don’t want another winter without paddleboarding.

Something changed for me, one day on the paddleboard last summer. The belly had gone and I felt comfortable taking my shirt off. I got a tattoo on my arm that day of the eye of Horus, symbolizing wellbeing, protection and restoration. Friends labelled my tattoo moment a midlife crisis. But it was the opposite. It was a day I genuinely felt I owned my life again.

Now, when away for work, if I’m in the UK, my bike and paddleboard are always in the car, and if abroad, I cycle in a hotel gym, or walk a mile or two rather than taking a taxi to assignments. Last summer, at the Paralympic Games in Tokyo which I was covering for the Telegraph, I bought a bicycle, and for the last nine of 23 days there, was pedaling the streets.

When I’m in LA, I hire a bike and have paddleboarded on the Pacific. I want to cycle into my 70s; I want to paddle all over the world. It’s as built into my diary as zoom calls, press conferences and fight nights. I’m still a workaholic – and very driven. My children are now into their 30s, my second grandchild is on the way and I feel now as if I “own” my 50s. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Thankfully, my will is now showing me a better way. – The Telegraph