'I had to change so I could see my kids grow': Tom Watson on downsizing and ditching politics
The pressures of politics played a huge toll on Labour’s Tom Watson. Today he explains why he got out before he paid the ultimate price.
Tom Watson's 50th birthday was both a high point and a low point in his life.
He'd celebrated in style at a party in London with his family and friends, enjoying a major blowout that saw him belt out a karaoke duet of Teenage Kicks with one of his musical heroes, Feargal Sharkey.
But the morning after, nursing the worst hangover of his life, he found himself staring at one of his birthday cards.
"It said '50 and fab', and all I could think of was '50 and fat'," he says. "I knew then that I had to change my life completely."
Fast forward two-and-a-bit years and he has done exactly that, slimming down to 14 stone and quitting as the MP for West Bromwich East and as Labour deputy leader.
By the end of next month he will have vacated his London flat, having moved back home near to where he grew up in Wyre Forest.
He's training to be a gym instructor, is in a happy relationship and spends a chunk of his newly found free time with his kids and looking after elderly family members – a breath of fresh air after the last few years of fighting his corner against Labour's hard-left.
He's also written a book, Downsizing, an account of how he lost eight stone and reversed his type 2 diabetes.
Buying a set of scales
It was 2017 when he decided things had to change. "I was reading a biography of my Labour hero John Smith, who died aged 55, and I thought, I'm heavier than he was – and I'm definitely more stressed than he was because I was surrounded by a whole load of trolling lunatics throwing bricks at me," he recalls.
For Mr Watson, 'day one' was when he finally plucked up the courage to buy a set of scales, reacting with a mixture of "horror and relief" when he saw that he was 22 stone.
"I knew that from then on in that would be the heaviest I would be," he says. "I knew I would change it and I would never allow myself to get to that weight again.”
WATCH: Tom Watson on 'inspirational' Blind Dave
We're sitting in Kimmy Loves Cake in Bewdley, where Mr Watson sticks to black coffee and avoids the scrumptious-looking range of goodies on display at the front of the shop.
He’s arrived on an electric bike, his preferred mode of transport these days, and is preparing for a 25-mile cycle ride and his first organised 10km run in the coming months. He is doing both events alongside Blind Dave Heeley, a “huge influence” who Mr Watson says finally got him into fitness after years of trying.
He’s come a long way from the baby steps he took back in 2017, when cutting out refined sugar became the first major step of his new regime.
It followed 25 years worth of false dawns involving what he calls "pretty crazy fat diets", which he often embarked upon with the late former Express & Star reporter Dave Lawley.
"I'm a sugar addict who was getting sugar cravings every three hours," Mr Watson says, recalling how his day would sometimes start with him polishing off cold takeaway curry or pizza from the night before.
"I had been on a 30-year cycle of constantly having to deal with a sugar low, which in my mind meant feeding my sugar addiction at regular intervals until I went to bed at night."
While researching Downsizing he says he realised the extent of his problem, after asking friends and family if they had any interesting anecdotes about eating food with him.
