Big Al has ‘got his life back’

A Wick man with big heart is glad he no longer has the body weight to match. Alan White, or Big Al to his friends, has lost nine stone since undergoing a gastric bypass operation in May, filmed by television show Fat Doctor. He is now looking forward to seeing the operation screened on the Discovery Home and Health Satellite channel.

Sixty-year-old Alan, who ran the Littlehampton Boys’ club as a volunteer for 27 years, until it became the Keystone Centre in 2006, said that he started piling on the pounds when he gave up smoking 20 years ago. “I had always been an active person. I was in the Army for 15-years, and even tried to join the SAS, that’s how fit I was. “But I went from 18 stone to 28 stone in 10 years. It has such an effect on me, I was depressed and very unhappy. I would not have got through it if it wasn’t for the support from my wife, Kate.” “I couldn’t even walk from the house to the car, that’s how bad it got. Table Tennis has always been part of my life, as a soldier I played all over the world. But now I had to play sitting down the wheelchair.”

Alan, who teaches table tennis to students at the Littlehampton Academy, first applied to have the operation, which is effectively a stomach staple, seven years ago, but was told that he was too overweight to survive surgery. “When I lay down for them to test my heart, I stopped breathing, my body just could not take it. I was told to lose weight, but I couldn’t. I would diet but it would soon start going back on again.”

At the start of this year, his doctor told him that he had no choice. “Basically, the risk of dying during the operation was balanced against the risk of dying because I was morbidly obese. I was referred to Dr Shaw Somers, or Fat Doctor, and he decided to do it.” Alan’s stomach has gone from the size of a melon, to that of a medium size egg. “I can only manage half a Weetabix for breakfast, where I used to have six! Food was everything, but I do not miss it. I have got my life back, I am only sad that I went down that road in the first place.”