How Guy manages his weight with the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet

Published September 2024 | 5 min read
Words by Carrie Hutchinson

After trying different diets, Guy found a weight management program that seemed perfect for his lifestyle. Then he discovered HCF could cover the cost. 

When his weight was at 104kg, Guy would struggle going up the stairs. While that isn’t uncommon for many people, it was a particular issue for him as it wasn’t just his weight that was causing this daily struggle. Although Guy, 60, had been strong and healthy for most of his life, he was carrying a range of injuries from being a professional rugby player.

“When you’ve had as many sporting injuries as I’ve had and as many operations as I’ve had due to sporting injuries, when you’re carrying too much weight, you really feel it,” he says.

After a successful career in professional sport, he found that when he came off the field permanently, his body began to change.

“I played professional sport and ate 6,000 calories [25,104 kilojoules] a day, then stopped playing professional sport and still ate 6,000 calories a day,” he says. “And [my weight] grew over time. I came to the realisation at some point that this wasn’t particularly healthy for me.”

Managing a healthy weight

Just before COVID struck, Guy lost quite a lot of weight, but “not in a very good way”. He began eating a lot of protein bars and highly processed foods. It wasn’t sustainable and the weight came back quite quickly.

So, he began going to the gym and listening to a lot of health and fitness podcasts where he learnt about the Mediterranean diet, gut microbiome and gut health. With this added knowledge, he then started looking for diets to match his lifestyle.

That’s when he discovered the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet, a higher-protein, low-GI weight management program.

On signing up to the program, participants download an app, decide whether to follow the simple or foodie route, and are then provided with the recipes they’ll need, meal plans and weight management tools, as well as home exercise plans and positive psychology tools.

“When I came across the Total Wellbeing Diet I thought, ‘this is brilliant; this is what I’m going to sign up for’,” he says. “So, I went on to the CSIRO website and there was a link that said your health provider could pay for this, and HCF was listed.”

Having been an HCF member since 2013, Guy says he was “really excited” to find out that HCF would support him to achieve his health goals by signing up to the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet 16 Week Program^*.

“HCF [is] paying for me to be a better person – a healthier person – is an incredible advantage to my health,” he says. “I genuinely do appreciate it.”

Hard work and dedication

Coupled with Guy’s established exercise program, which includes resistance training and running on the treadmill, he was soon feeling increasingly better each day. And luckily, as a former professional rugby player, Guy is used to being dedicated and motivated.

“I get up at six o’clock every morning, seven days a week and I follow a very rigid regime,” he says. “I make a cup of coffee, go to the gym, my wife takes the dogs to the dog park, I make breakfast, she comes home, we have breakfast together and I go to work.”

The simple, healthy breakfast options on the program – recipes like protein shakes, overnight oats – made them easy to fit into his routine. Guy also has a light lunch, with plenty of fruit.

“Then I eat a really good meal at night, which is high in vegetables – lots of different colours, lots of good gut microbiome food – and a small amount of protein,” he says.

Guy has also been watching his portion sizes; where protein would once take up around 90% of Guy’s plate, he now says it now only takes up a small section.

“And I’ve come to a terrible realisation that I quite like vegetables and salad,” he says.

Seeing results and experiencing challenges

Guy completed the first 16 weeks of the Total Wellbeing Diet with great results. He lost 14kg and, more importantly, is feeling better.

“I'm not going to say it's been easy, because I have some very unhealthy eating habits that I'd like to continue doing but can't,” he says. “But this has actually changed my view on food quite substantially.”

Guy and Mandy have even experienced a difference when they travelled to Europe on their annual trip to meet his first grandchild. On the way through they stopped off in Prague and “walked the whole city” without feeling uncomfortable or not enjoying the experience.

“I can now stand up without being sore; I used to have a constant pain in my back because I got a compression fracture when I got my head in the wrong place in a rugby tackle!” he says. “For years I lived with pain, but I’m pain-free now.”

He hasn’t got much further to go to reach his goal weight, but his sleep quality has increased, his digestion is functioning better and his resting heart rate, which sits in the low 50s throughout the day, has improved, too.

“Losing the weight, I just feel better,” he says. “I’m not out of breath, I’m not puffing when I’m walking upstairs, and I can run on the beach with my dogs and actually enjoy it.”

Guy says that maintaining a healthy weight has made for a “better life”, plus, he’s able to measure himself up against some of his younger workmates.

“At the age of 60 – and this is going to sound weird but it’s very important to me – I can still beat all the young people in the office here at push-ups,” he says.

In addition, Guy says he feels more positively about ageing and the future, and the importance of being fit and healthy.

“I'd like to spend however many years I've got left not only extending my life but also being able to travel, live healthily, be active, to enjoy doing the things that my wife and I like doing,” he says. “And the only way you can do that is by looking after yourself. My experiences with this diet and HCF have given me the opportunity to focus on doing that.”

Support on your health journey

HCF is passionate about empowering our members, like Guy, to help live their healthiest life. That’s why we’re helping eligible members save on the evidence-based CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet^*. Created by Australia’s national science agency, the program combines a higher-protein, low-GI eating plan with proven weight management tools to help improve habits and create lifelong positive behaviours.