Bodyslims guru Gerard Moran tells how he was told he’d die from his alcohol addiction – Sunday World

byTrends Catchup -September 14, 2022

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In fact — if you follow the Bodyslims programme correctly — you will possibly hear the ‘weight whisperers’ soothing tones more than anyone else in your entire family — as his motivational speaking is a pivotal part of Ireland’s most successful on-line weight-loss programme.

Awarded the coveted distinction of the Global Search Award 2022, the internet and Facebook has helped make Bodyslims an international success story — with dieters all over the world signing up for the calorie-controlled plan.

But there was a time when the dad-of-two was so confused and depressed that vomiting without splashing his jeans, after a day of drinking, was an achievement.

Gerard says: “People recognise me all the time. Some people are very up-front, and some look at you tentatively, but I love to hear their stories.

“I mean there was a time when I was just a disaster. At 23, a doctor in London told me I was killing myself with alcohol.

“The reason so many people reach for food is to because of emotions. My addiction was alcohol — that was what I would reach for. A lot of people are functional alcoholics, I was literally in bits.”

Gerard adds: “I was living in the UK, I had a pain in my back, so I went to a local doctor who sent me to a hospital in Hackney. The consultant ordered a battery of test, I’d no idea why. When they called me back to talk to me, about this thing in my back, the doctor said that they could treat it.

“Then he asked me if I would like to talk about my drinking?

“I had put down on the form that I drank ten pints a week. But the doctor was an Australian and he started to go through the results of my tests, and then he stopped mid-sentence and said: ‘Listen mate you are dying.’

“To be honest with you I was so sick, I could barely keep things down, but when he said that to me, I was shocked. Anyone walking along the road who would have seen me would have said — ‘that guy is a disaster.’

“I mean at this stage I would regularly vomit blood,” says Gerard.

The Dubliner did what most of us do when times are bad — he rang his mum —and she welcomed him home.

“I was an only child, and she was a widow and I had given her endless trouble, but I came home, and I joined AA.”

It was in AA that the dad-of-two discovered that he had an amazing gift for public speaking, one that would eventually help him with his career and many jobs and businesses.

The enigmatic entrepreneur explains: “It was my partner Sharon who asked me to put together the Bodyslims programme.

“We just set out to be the best in world. That’s the way we approached it, not to be super successful or to maybe be a franchise, just to be the best in the world. Sharon was the face and brains behind Salsaslims — the biggest dance company in Ireland and the UK at one time so she is brilliant.”

Bodyslims started in 2016 in Stillorgan Park Hotel with only a handful of customers. “We started off with half of the smallest room, and the next course we filled the room and before we knew it there was standing room only.

“Once, the Gardai arrived in to complain because the traffic was backed up with cars trying to get into the hotel, it was crazy.

“What I didn’t realise was how much putting on weight damaged your self-esteem. People know how to lose weight, it is just the doing it that is the hard part and we support them through that.

“There’s ten of us now working in the Bodyslims team, including part-timers, who have all done the programme and they would have weighed in with us, so they know it inside out.”

“I try not to talk at people, I try to talk to them. Bodyslims is all about people. The only reason I am any good at this is because I was so bad at it first

“I wake up every morning and I am so glad to be alive. People say that, but I really mean it. We have no right to life — we just win a lottery every day,” says Gerard.

For more information log on to Bodyslims.com