Kit Lucevs Weight Loss Story

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THE WEIGHT GAIN

There was only one thing Lucev loved more than his footy: his booze. It was nothing for him to knock back a bottle and half of Jägermeister and a six-pack of beer on a night out, then gorge on junk food the next day. After finishing school, Lucev was unemployed for a while, and with nothing else to do, drinking filled the gap. “I always wanted to change,” he says. “I just didn’t have the willpower.” Soon his podgy physique began to make him a liability on the Aussie Rules field. Eventually, he became so self-conscious about squeezing his 136-kilogram bulk into his increasingly tight jersey, he quit.

THE CHANGE

At the beginning of 2011, Lucev and a mate went for a midnight junk-food binge and had “the biggest feed ever”. Guilt-ridden and depressed afterwards, Lucev decided that something had to change. A friend who was a personal trainer owed him $80. Instead of paying Lucev back, the trainer offered to give him a session. A gentle cardio workout destroyed him, but Lucev kept going, doing some graphic design work for his mate in exchange for more sessions.

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He’d returned to footy the previous season, but was still too big to do anything but sit in the forward line. “I wasn’t very mobile,” he says. When he arrived for pre-season training last year the weight had started to come off, but he still tipped the scales at 127kg. But it wasn’t long before he was doing five weights and five cardio sessions a week, plus playing footy on weekends. He also quit drinking and, as a consequence, eliminated fast food.

THE WEIGHT LOSS

Over the course of last year, Lucev lost around 37kg, his jeans size shrinking from 43 to 34. The drop helped propel him to the best footy season of his life. Moving from the forward line to the ruck, he became captain of the team, won the club best and fairest award and was the association’s runner-up in the same category. To top if off, he also got a girlfriend and is now studying for his Certificate 3 and 4 in Fitness at TAFE.

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The only blight on Lucev’s golden year was a lingering shoulder injury that’s kept him off the field so far this year. He’s now working on building muscle and stripping fat for his comeback. “The injury got me down for a little while as I thought about all the work I’d done, but there’s no way I’m going to let the weight creep back on,” he says.

THE WEIGHT LOSS ADVICE

Small changes add up. “I did a lot of little food substitutions, like wholemeal for white bread, skim for full-cream milk. It’s not hard and it becomes a habit that’s easy to maintain.” Sign up for sacrifice: “If you’re not prepared for some level of sacrifice, you’re not going to change. I realised that you can’t binge drink and train.” Find a reason: “When I was in pain during my training, I thought about footy on the weekend. Without footy, it might not have happened.”