Story By: Alex Cope, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
Video Credit: CEN/Niantic
These startling before-and-after images show a British student who lost 10 stone in a year by playing Pokemon GO.
Tommy Monkhouse from London has shared his weight loss story after dropping 63.5 kilogrammes (140 lbs) in one year by becoming more active through using the popular mobile phone game Pokemon GO.
Tommy says he was an isolated child who “didn’t have many friends” growing up in London.
He reached over 23 stone and said: “It was only when I realised that I had got myself to a very big point and that was I’d put on so much weight that when I smiled my eyes closed. It was then that I looked at a photo of myself someone sent me and I didn’t recognise myself, I didn’t recognise the guy staring back at me.”
The University of Greenwich student says he then “spoke to himself” to ask how he was “doing this” to himself and decided to change.
He says someone then told him that as a big Pokemon fan he should set up a Pokemon GO account. He said his first outing with the application that he expected to be a “20 or 30-minute” walk became a “three-hour walk” during which he “smiled” the whole time.
He said the first walk was an “incredible journey” and he began setting himself targets of distances to walk and weight to lose, a goal which saw him shed eventually shed 10 stone in a year.
Tommy, who writes opinion pieces for the university’s website, joined a Pokemon GO group of fellow enthusiasts, who say he has “come out of his shell” since meeting them in summer 2019.
He has become “best friends” with other members of the group who say for a while he was doing “20-kilometre” walks at a time that help shed the impressive amount of weight.
The student says the game has had “the biggest impact on his life”, changing him from “a little over 23 stone, almost 25 at one point” to “feeling happy in myself, feeling physically strong, physically better, and dropping 10 stone”.
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