(Age 16)
Since 2007, I have lost over 12 stone (76 kg) without dieting. I often get asked how I lost weight, so here is my story…
As a child and then into my teens I was always very skinny and acutely conscious of that fact. After I joined the army at age 16 I started to put on weight and from then I have always had an issue with both controlling my weight and sustaining any weight loss I did have.
There were periods in my life where I was at a healthy weight but for the most part I was overweight.
At around the age of 40-44, I was at my heaviest and weighed over 27 and a half stone (175 kg).
 Tim Bowyer (Age 39) & Bina Pattel – 5 Years Before Universal Medicine |
 Tim Bowyer (Age 40) – 4 Years Before Universal Medicine |
Up until that point the diets I had tried to control my weight (and there were many) never worked. Yes, I would initially lose weight but it would always come back on because I couldn’t or didn’t want to sustain it. I wasn’t willing to let go of the foods, like bread, pasta, chocolate, alcohol, cakes etc. that I knew to be the cause of my weight gain.
In 2007 things started to change. I began to attend the presentations of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon and there I gained a better understanding of:
- How food truly affects my body,
- Why I choose to eat these foods,
- Why I choose to eat the quantity of food that I was eating,
- When I choose to eat these foods.
I had never been presented with this knowledge before and so with this understanding I was able to start making changes that truly supported me.
It wasn’t easy at first as I had to undo over 30 years of neglect and abuse. One thing that really helped me was to use ‘bridging’ as a tool. I knew if I came off a certain food ‘cold turkey’ it would be very hard to continue so, for instance, with something like coffee (I loved my cappuccino with chocolate sprinkles). I first started with decaf coffee, then after a while I went onto soya milk, then no chocolate sprinkles and then eventually no coffee at all.
Apart from alcohol, which I stopped straight away, I found that I could substitute all of the foods that didn’t support me and eventually come off them altogether. Trying to control my weight loss or sustain it wasn’t even a consideration at this point, it was more a choice to start to love and support myself in a way I had never contemplated before. Naturally, as a by-product of this new change the weight started to fall off.
What was also a big revelation for me was the fact that because I had started to express more and say how I truly felt I was losing even more weight. I wasn’t holding onto stuff as much so therefore my body could let go of it.
It has been 7 years now and when people find out that I have lost all this weight they are very surprised, mainly because I don’t have any sagging skin that is associated with a large loss of weight. I am able to share with them that the way I lost weight and kept it off it has been done gradually. I also share that if I had seen it as a diet then it would have become goal orientated and as soon as I reached my intended weight I would have wanted to celebrate, which would have resulted in going back to the foods that put the weight on in the first place.
 Tim Bowyer (Age 51) & Bina Pattel – 7 Years after Universal Medicine |
 Tim Bowyer (Age 51) – 7 Years after Universal Medicine |
I also share that I lost the weight without having to go through any rigorous exercise regime. My only form of exercise was walking at a normal pace for a minimum of 15 minutes and occasionally I went to the gym for weight training.
My weight at the moment is just over 15 and a half stone (99 kg) and the weight loss is an ongoing process.
So when I am now asked how I lost weight, I can express that I feel diets do not work, and that only by making it a ‘way of life’ can you truly succeed in controlling and sustaining weight loss.
By Tim Bowyer, Age 51, London Bus Driver
You may also be interested in:
How to Lose Weight (Unimedliving.com)
788 Comments
What a fantastic inspiration you are Tim. To have a deeper understanding of why we go for certain foods, rather than simply trying to omit them from our diet gives a true purpose to what and how we eat, leaving no reason for ‘dieting’ but an openness to another way to take true care of oneself.
By bringing in a more caring and nurturing way of living we make big changes to our health, there has to be a consistency and a commitment to a healthier and more supportive way of living and eating if we wish to maintain these benefits.
Tim what I love most is your zest for life – which really shines through in your blog. I also love your perspective on life, I think often we get obsessed and consumed by our weight and by losing weight rather than just seeing is as a gradual step by step process – after all if our approach to it isn’t healthy, how can the end result be healthy?
Learning to love and support yourself is the key to losing weight and keeping it off. Because when you are full of love (or as full as you can be) for yourself, it is easier to say no to things that are not loving for you (i.e. that second helping, foods that make you feel dull, that extra episode of TV so you stay up a little later etc….). Then when you say no at that time, your body registers that, like a marker, and even if you say yes to things that are not loving, that marker is still there so you know how it feels when you say no, supporting you to say no again.
Sustaining weight loss is a completely different story to short term loss, because it takes consistency and a commitment to a healthier and supportive way of eating as opposed to a sporadic pattern of eating little and then loads.
For some it may seem like an impossibility to lose weight, get fit and become healthy again. Tim, you show what is possible and how to do it. You are a fantastic role model.
Great to read your blog again Tim, you look incredible and we would love an update on how you feel now. Your photos after Universal Medicine are beaming with vitality and we can see the sparkle in your eyes and your entire body. You’ve shown us how we can support our body to return to its natural size and weight without having to go through any painful exercises or diet regime. It is all in the way we choose to live, it can either support us or make us sick.
Just looking at your photos Tim shows that you have accepted a greater level of responsibility for yourself and this is truly inspiring.
What’s described here can be applied to so many other things – smoking, stopping drinking, stopping making ourselves anxious… what stands out is how the focus wasn’t to lose weight but to love yourself more. When we shift the focus like this, there’s no fight and battle against the thing we’re trying to give up or stop doing. The transformation almost happens as a by-product of the other choices we make to start to love and appreciate our bodies and listen to what they’re trying to tell us. Thanks for sharing Tim.
These changes are amazing Tim, and testament to the fact you are committed and dedicated to a life that honours your body, and in doing so inspire us all to see we can live a life connected, healthy, loving and vital.
Thank you Tim.
Such an inspiring story Tim, being skinny like you were before the before, the hardest part for me is how you became so big from so skinny. I don’t mean the weight, I mean how does one go from a small frame to a large frame. The army must have some tricks that I have missed out on by not joining up.
It is amazing to see the person that you are blossoming out and feeling incredible for it. Which just goes to show how much love there can be for oneself and how our bodies will always reflect this fact. Which is also incredible, because as it is our bodies that we move around on the earth each day amongst the communities that we live in, then how inspiring are you, for us all to see that there can be a body a love living and walking amongst us.
It is a good way to lose weight. I will try to follow. Thank you for the useful knowledge
The key ingredient to any true change of your diet, is definitely a good dose of humble honesty. Without it you will never understand why you use certain foods the way you do.
Holding on to hurts, emotions etc burdens our body and they are heavy, it is not just our food habits that weigh us down.
So true Samantha, and everything is all related, we tend to eat more when we are feeling emotional or hurt but this is not always the case for everyone. It shows that our size and shape has a lot more to do with how we feel and the issues we carry than just our consumption of food.
I love how you bring expression into this blog, the fact that by expressing yourself more you lost weight. We can carry around so much internal baggage and to begin to discard that is a real weight of our minds. …and it seems our bodies.
“Only by making it a ‘way of life’ can you truly succeed in controlling and sustaining weight loss.” These words Tim fully understood would make the whole diet industry go out of business.
Asking questions such as ‘how’, ‘why’ and ‘when’ when it comes to our choices are great pointers to reflect and not just accept our decisions as failures or successes, e.g. our diet or performance in an exam or work project.
Tim, this is a stunning story of continuing success and transformation – I love it. It’s so inspiring for everyone to read. You are a living miracle.
When we approach issues lovingly we get to see the real ‘issue’ was not what we thought originally but the hardness we had with ourselves.
Great sharing Tim. Weight loss is indeed changing our way of life, which becomes a simple step by step process if we see that by living such a life that we not only lose weight but also start feeling more beautiful from the inside.
All changes that are supportive for us to live harmoniously must have self-love and self-care as there foundation, otherwise any changes we make will only ever be short lived.
Anything that is done without self-love and self-care often doesn’t last long at all. And, I agree with you Elizabeth, true change definitely has the foundation of self-love and self-care otherwise it will crumble.
Absolutely, self-care and self-love are great foundations that are both needed and supportive for all changes we bring into our lives.
When dieting becomes the focus the key issue for why the weight is on doesn’t get addressed then when the weight drops the anxiety increases as the issue comes up again and this is often why we see people yo-yoing back into old patterns as they have not addressed the issue that led to the weight gain in the first place.
Wanting things to change (relationships, weight, income etc.) from a focus on changing a ‘bad’ to a ‘good situation doesn’t provide long lasting results. Every time my life has changed and remained comes from focusing on loving myself and being gentle and tender with myself first.
It’s hard to get over the change in you Tim – you look beautiful. Great reminder too that true change doesn’t occur in a quick abrupt way but gradual loving and understanding steps. This blog is very bridging too.
Food can be a poison or something that supports us, depending on how we use it. If we use food to bury what we feel it will always be a poison for the body.
This is lovely Tim what a transformation thank you for sharing.
Being aware of how foods affects our body and wellbeing is a real gift which has been shared openly in the presentations by Universal Medicine. Knowing about this allows us to be in charge of the quality of our daily living. If we choose food that supports our body then we will feel vital whereas if we choose food that causes disharmony in our body then we will feel less than vital…the choice is ours.
It is very empowering to learn, explore and realise how the foods we eat are the end result of an energy we have chosen, through which a momentum is initiated affecting our behaviour and choices thereafter. If we are willing to go deeper than just dieting, and open ourselves up to honesty and truth as you have done and shared so beautifully Tim, we discover that it is mostly due to hurts that we seek to protect ourselves and seek comfort with food and behaviours that do not truly represent or support us to simply be who we are. There is always more to reveal if we are open to exploring, and the gift in that is that there is always more of us to discover and live.
The link is often ignored but when we stop to clock for actions before we eat we are given gold in finding that the foods are set up for us to eat even though we know that this a far from supportive for the body.
Your honesty is so refreshing – how you knew the foods that caused your weight gain but were not willing to let them go and the fact that the more you chose to express the more the weight dropped off. So interesting that so many weigh themselves down with all the unspoken issues that they dare not talk about. No need for all those fad diets – all that is required is to lovingly start to express!