A Lower Hutt man who has lost a staggering 154kg in two years is now seeking removal surgery for excess skin.
Eli Moon, 34, began his life-saving health journey in August 2023, after a major health scare with heart failure.
“I had been struggling with my weight all my life, just kind of chronic overeating, and my heart began to understandably cut out,” he said.
“It got to the point where I basically spent a month in hospital very sick, and since then I’ve turned my life around, eating well and a lot of exercise.”
At the time of his health scare, Moon weighed 290kg. He said while he continues his journey towards his goal weight, he is in the process of joining a wait-list for an excess skin removal surgery, which he has been told anecdotally can take up to a few years.
While he said the journey has been steady, he is “still going”, and “enjoying the lifestyle and new habits”.
“I’ve still got some weight to lose. That’s what I’m focussed on at the moment, just sort of getting smaller and smaller.”
Food addiction
He said food can be a “nastier” addiction to wrestle with, as at some point, people “have to eat”, and are “constantly” exposed to fast food advertisements.
“In some ways there has been a psychological switch in my brain, where I think ‘that is not what I do anymore’. There’s a part of me that would love to demolish a big bucket of chicken, but that’s not where I’m at anymore in life. There’s a ‘no’ response immediately.”
Prior to his weight loss, Moon said he disliked exercise, as it was “painful or embarrassing”. But gradually over time, he learned to enjoy it.
“I used to struggle to walk to the letterbox. By the time I got out of hospital I had lost a fair bit of weight and was able to move around the hospital fairly well.”
He started out walking through the hospital with a walker, then moved to water-based exercise and now regularly swims, walks up hills, and even participates in medieval re-enactments when he can.
His diet now consists of salads, shakes, cheese, apples, produce which he has started growing from his own garden, and a “ludicrous amount of coffee”.
“I can breathe, I can think properly, I’m not in this kind of depressed haze. I have better relationships with my family. There’s not this whole difficulty of everything. I used to go into a restaurant or something with my family and I would have to be worried like, ‘oh, I’m going to break one of the restaurant chairs’. Life just feels a lot more accessible to me.”
‘So much loose skin’
Both during his recovery and now, Moon has frequently hosted Dungeons & Dragons sessions. This is where he met his friend Nathan Wheoki, who set up a page on GiveALittle to help him achieve the funds needed for the surgery.
“I had been talking to Nathan about the problem I have and I’m going to continue to have in the future, which is I’ve got so much loose skin on me. The colossal weight loss is fantastic, but my body is irrevocably changed from what I went through.
“That is going to be problematic both now and in the future, in terms of mobility, comfort and reoccurring skin conditions.”
He said that was when Wheoki suggested starting the page, to which Moon thought “it really can’t hurt to try”.
While Moon is thrilled with the results of his health journey and weight loss, he said the excess skin has been “quite hard emotionally”.
“I’ve done all this work to get my body to a place where I’m happier with it, but I feel a little bit sad this is something I cannot get rid of.
“I cannot work this away with exercise or diet or whatnot. There’s not really another option apart from surgery.”
Moon said he is thankful for the support people have shown him so far, and wished “the best of luck” to those on a similar journey to him, as he said it can be “incredibly isolating”.
“It is quite a lonely place when you are stuck in that sort of rut, and when you’re eating to the point that I was, where I was hurting myself. It’s good for people to reach out and make sure they have people in their life they can talk to, because it’s a really lonely place otherwise.
“At the start, be easy on yourself, and if you’re in the same sort of state that I was, swimming was really good for my body, because it was low-impact and gentle. So I didn’t do damage to myself as I was trying to get out of the state that I was in.
“I spent literally every day at the swimming pool often for three or four hours. Just moving up and down, and slowly getting movement back in my life.”
Moon is seeking to raise $30,000 for his skin removal surgery.
