Cruel online comment led to a weight loss drive

Until a few years ago, having been a columnist for varying publications for over two decades now, I would wake up on a Saturday morning and become ‘Angry from Colney’ for a while as I read some pretty unpalatable untruths about myself. Some were amusing and laced with dashes of humour, yet some were downright offensive, disgusting and libellous. Another facet to this abuse is my job; as a teacher, as I attempt to keep the two entities separate, yet others use my profession as a stick to beat me with if I dare have an opinion and disagree with the social media groupthink.

I was falsely and publicly accused, whilst at home with my family watching Britain’s Got Talent, of ‘beating’ an elderly woman outside a local kebab shop, which was exacerbated by another female claiming that it must be true as I look like a ‘nasty piece of work’. I have been accused of being a far-right neo-Nazi sympathiser as well as, the same week, being decried as a ‘cross-eyed lefty’. I have been called an ugly slaphead (fair comment), the bloke off MasterChef, and of being as funny as a Mrs Brown's Boys box set, which upset me more than being accused of being a beater-upper of geriatrics.

Greg Wallace

But then I stopped reading the comments after one that was so true, and cut to the bone, that it changed my life for the better. I read the comment in January after, in a dull moment, egotistically googling myself to see what new comments had been written. The comment in question was based around a picture of me, on a bike ride, having a break outside a friend’s house with the singer Paul Young. Now my profile picture, taken by a professional newspaper photographer, shows me in a relatively good light, weighing 12 and a half stone. However, due to lockdown and a complete lack of willpower, I ballooned to just shy of 16 and a half stone and the picture did not lie. With both pictures side by side the commenter wrote: ‘These two pictures look like what to expect on a Tinder date, and what actually shows up’.

Brett Ellis and (right) with singer Paul Young. A reader's unkind comparison spurred Brett to lose three stone

At first, I chuckled but then I realised it was true. The weekend before I had begrudgingly packed up my clothes for a staycation in the loft before hurriedly ordering some attire that fit from online. I felt embarrassed, not that you should for being overweight, but because I felt my self esteem drop like a stone, like I wish my waistline would. My belt only just squeezed around my trunk, my go to Rab jacket was now as tight as the Tories on budget day and I had taken to wearing shorts down the pub as my middle-aged Levi’s were now looking like budgie smugglers.

And so that one comment kicked me into shape. On January 24 I commenced the crash diet, started undertaking a brutal exercise regime every day and, most importantly, cut out my kryptonite: peanuts. Now, a few months later, despite nearly coming close to a daily coronary after my run/cycle/row gym combo, I finally went back into the attic at the weekend as I have now dropped a pleasing three stone. I have another stone to go, which I’m hoping will shock others like it did when I achieved a similar weight drop some ten years ago. Feeling good about myself having hit my target of losing three stone in six months, I walked into a classroom. At the end, one of the year sevens put his hand up to ask a question: "Sir…I noticed you’ve dropped a lot of weight?" After thanking him for noticing, he then followed it up with "Do you have a terminal wasting disease?"

• Brett Ellis is a teacher