Peter FitzSimons - The Great Aussie Bloke Slim-Down

The story of one man who had the guts to lose his gut. This is a book that will finally help an ordinary bloke lose weight. (Dont worry, it has nothing to do with wearing a red bandana.)

Ever struggled with your weight? Or did you stop struggling years ago and let the pies win? Peter FitzSimons has been there and eaten that. In The Great Aussie Bloke Slim-Down , he will lead you through the fads that failed him, the diets that died fast and left him furious, and the ways his waistline kept the belt industry in business.

Take tips from someone who knows how to eat and drink way too much and has finally learnt how to stop. Peter FitzSimons was a large lad with little self-control who has found the light and eventually become lighter. In this book, written in fluent Aussie-bloke, he tells you how to live a better, healthier and happier life, while showing you who is responsible for your getting fat in the first place. So if youre serious about losing weight, sobering up and all the rest, what you have to do is this: face the truth, the elephant in the room is YOU.

While Ive always been proud of my husband and his writing, I am particularly proud of this book, and most especially the change in his life, and our marriage, that it documents.

For 25 years I have seen his weight go up and down, invariably, alas, with each up outdoing each down to the point that the 126 kilogram Wallaby second-rower I married in 1992, whose fighting weight had been 114 kilograms only two years earlier, had turned into 152 kilograms of a Whole-Lotta-Love by New Years Day 2011.

And of course my broad experience has been matched by hundreds of thousands, lets say millions , of women across Australia, and its been the case for decades. The problem is, what do you do in the face of it?

Nag? Encourage? Give him a gentle talking to, about how you want him to be around for another 50 years, not just another 20? I, frankly, tried all of those and a couple of others besides but with no luck. Being moderate in anything is just not in Petes nature, which, when applied to most things like familial love, work ethic, sport, romance, fatherhood, the Australian republic and having fun, made me fall in love with him in the first place. But not in the eating.

And then there was the drinking.

To be fair, Pete was not a bad man with too much grog in him.

But he was not the man I married. When he drank too much, he became careless of those around him, careless in his judgement, careless in the way he spoke to me, his fuse was shorter, his parenting and partnering so much less energetic, and he was generally much less fun to be around.

Pete never drank at home for the first 15 years of our marriage, but the pressures of book deadlines, of daily journalism, of parenting and his professional speaking commitments, which could involve lunches and dinners as often as four times a week, conspired to mean that knocking back copious amounts of alcohol became part of his life, at home as well.

There were periods when he realised what he was doing, stopped ceased both eating and drinking to excess, lost weight and everything suddenly got better.

But the minute he got to his target weight and proved that he could do it, figured he had this whole weight loss, non-drinking thing tapped, he fell into the old trap of going back to living his old life pass-the-pies and pull-the-cork-out-please and the weight quickly piled back on.

Every time we talked about it, Id end up getting precisely nowhere. Hed promise to pull back, and might for a short time, but soon hed be back to his old over-indulgent lifestyle. Until, one day, it was like a light went on, like all the planets suddenly aligned and he worked it out. He worked out how to live the full life he does, always at a million miles an hour, and enjoy it every bit as much as he ever did and more, without over-indulging, without the stress on our relationship, his heart, or even his belt buckle. And it wasnt me, it was a simple conversation with a mate that did it. (Thanks, Jordan.)

Ultimately I hope The Great Aussie Bloke Slim-Down will be that for the men who read this book a chat with a mate they can trust, a catalyst for positive change.

It has taken me a while, frankly, to believe that Petes latest commitment to losing weight was not just one more passing phase, that he wasnt going to revert to the old ways, but, two years in, I am now convinced.

I have a new man on my hands, and in my arms

He is just like the old man, but lighter, younger, faster, more patient, more fun. And an even better father than he was.

I do hope this book might have a similarly beneficial effect on your partner.

Warmest regards,

Lisa Wilkinson,

Sydney, September 2016

The cartoonists were most unkind when I took over as Chair of the Australian Republican Movement. (Rod Clement)

Oi! You. Fatty Boomka. Yes, you.

Dont look around at others. I am talking to you, bloke. And dont be offended at being called Fatty Boomka either, precious, because I used to be you. You and I were the Boomka twins, and I could more than hold my own against you on the other end of the seesaw. And, just like you, my weight yo-yoed up and down for 30 odd years, with the problem being that the low point of every downward yo kept trending upwards, as did the high yo.

Oh, come on. You have been on exactly the same yo-yo weight plan very fat pretty fat not-so-fat-but-still-a-whole-lot-to-love VERY bloody fat and we both know it.

Now, before you and I continue, I need to make a couple of things clear:

I am in no way a nutritional expert, but I respect those who are.

I am not an expert on human movement.

I am as far from an academic as it gets.

I really am you, Boomka.

I have faced exactly the same expanding waistline challenges as you, elbowed you out of the way at the buffet table, staggered past you at the bar, disgraced myself at Aunty Marys with a notorious display of how many extra helpings of dessert just one man could have, eaten more sneaky Kit Kats than you when our wives werent looking and, most significantly, suffered alongside you every New Years Day when we both stepped on our bathroom scales to work out just how bad the damage had been over the last 12 months.

For yonks, mate, while standing on those scales, just like you, Id breathe out heavily to get rid of all that weighty oxygen, then tucked my tummy in cos that just might help, then Id lean out to the right, just like you did, and manage to make them read about two kilos lighter, just like you did

How am I going? Do you accept now, that I am you?

And then, of course, digital scales came along and ruined everything for us, didnt they? (Well, nearly. I still fancy myself as something of a scales whisperer, lowering myself gently while holding on to the shower stall so as not to frighten it high, before removing my hand. By talking to the scales gently, rocking back a little and lifting my left and right toe at the same time, I can STILL lop about .3 of a kilo off.)