Tamati's story

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Tamati Davis has turned his life around since his enormous weight saw him admitted to hospital in 2006. And losing 103kg hasn’t just made a difference to him, but to his whole whanau.

“My mum would come into my room at night if she thought I had stopped breathing, she used to say it sounded like I was drowning.”

“When my doctor put me into hospital, he didn’t say I might be (in danger of dying) but he had that look.”

“They had me on the gurney and had to take me into the hospital kitchen to get weighed, because they didn’t have any other scales that were big enough. They weighed me at 234kg – that’s 500-odd pounds of butter.”

“I spent 3 weeks in hospital. I had my 10-year-old nephew coming up to me, asking if I would be at his 21st.”

Support from his whanau helped Tamati take early steps to get more active, with the help of exercise and nutrition advice at the Te Taiwhenua o Heretaunga health centre in Hastings. But just getting up the nerve to go was a real hurdle.

“The hardest thing was just to walk through the door. I would have parked up with my car facing the door at about 9.30am and just watched people going in and out. I sat there until 11.45 saying, ‘I’ll go now, I’ll go now’ I didn’t think it would take as long as it did. I had one of my best friends come and support me,that gave me the courage to actually go in.”

Changing his diet was another important step too.

"I had a lot of help and support from Heather at the gym. She was great. She asked things like what I had for breakfast. Instead of saying it was all wrong, she just said cut it in half, that sort of thing, use green-top milk. The changes weren’t so much about what I eat, but how much.”

“I still have a bit of chocolate, that sort of thing. But it’s not how I used to have it.”

It was a logical next step for Tamati to take his new-found exercise programme into the public.

“4 November 2006 will always be a special day – it was my first triathlon. I was down to do the 12km bike stage, but it was lengthened to 18km. I can still remember Heather Skipworth (the personal trainer) yelling at me `don’t you dare turn around early!’ After that I had a sore arse for a week.”

“Since then I’ve completed 4 triathlons and walked the Great Lake Relay in Taupo earlier this year. My aim now is to complete my first full triathlon (swim-cycle-run).”

Another goal is to get back to fulltime work – something Tamati gave up so he could devote his energies to getting his health right.

These days, Tamati weighs in at a still-large but considerably more manageable 131 kg. He’s helping to support others facing a similar challenge, and his new-found lifestyle is also influencing his whanau.

“My sister and my brother have been going to the gym. My brother finds he can fit into his clothes a bit better. My mum is buying some different food.

It’s spreading through my whanau, which is good.

Now I can do things like walking the kids to school, run around on a touch field. I still see myself as a big person but things are a lot better now.”

Tamati Davis - October 2007