Turning My Weight Loss Into Something Bigger
I’ve decided to do something a little different with my weight loss this year.
Over the next three months, for every 100 grams I lose, I’m going to donate $10 of my own money to raise funds and awareness for men’s mental health through MensLine Australia.
This cause is deeply personal to me.
Towards the later years of school, I struggled heavily with anxiety and depression. At the time, I didn’t really understand what anxiety was or why I was feeling the way I did. A teacher recommended I speak with the school counsellor, and those conversations ended up making a huge difference. Through multiple sessions in my final year of school, I learnt how anxiety worked, how to manage it and how to deal with the negative thoughts I was experiencing. Thankfully, over time, I was able to get to a much better place and have since learnt to manage my anxiety fairly well.
A few years later, mental health became much more personal to me in a way I never expected.
My sister started dating a guy named Grantley a few years ago. He was an incredible guy and became a really close part of our family. He and my sister were living together, studying anaesthetics and planning their future together. They were talking about marriage and kids and had built a life that seemed to be heading in one direction.
I knew Grantley had OCD, but if I’m being honest, I didn’t really understand the condition or how much it could affect someone.
As his studies and everything else going on in his life became more stressful, his mental health deteriorated. I didn't know at the time how bad things had become. He had been struggling with suicidal thoughts, seeing psychiatrists and had made previous attempts to take his own life.
On 26 May 2025, Grantley died by suicide while he was living in Canberra.
My sister found out when police came to her workplace after she had requested a welfare check.
I don't think you can ever really understand the impact something like that has on a family until it happens to you.
My sister has been affected in ways that I know will stay with her for the rest of her life. In the weeks and months afterwards, I travelled back and forth between Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra and Albury trying to support her and the rest of my family while also trying to make sense of everything myself.
Then, in the middle of all of this, I found out something I had never known about my own family.
My nonno, who passed away before I was born, had also died by suicide.
Growing up, I had always been told that his heart stopped. My parents had never told me the truth because they wanted to protect me as a child and didn't want me to think differently about him.
Finding that out while everything else was happening was difficult to process. It made me realise that suicide wasn't just something that had suddenly entered my life. It had affected my family before I was even born.
The months afterwards were difficult. I wasn't in a great place physically or mentally and I had lost a lot of the motivation I previously had for training and nutrition.
A friend of mine, Kareem, who coaches people with their health and physique, helped me get some direction back. I decided to focus on myself and made getting into shape a goal.
Over the next five months, I lost more than 13 kg.
That journey gave me something to focus on again and helped me get myself into a much better place physically and mentally.
But probably the biggest thing I've taken from everything that's happened isn't about training or weight loss.
It's how much people around me are struggling.
Since everything happened, I've had a lot more friends come to me and talk about things they're dealing with themselves. Anxiety, depression, OCD and other issues. I think part of the reason they're comfortable talking to me is because I've been more open about my own experiences and have tried to make it clear that there's nothing wrong with admitting that you're struggling.
That's when I really started to appreciate just how big an issue men's mental health is.
There are a lot of guys who are struggling but don't talk about it. Sometimes they don't know how to talk about it, sometimes they don't want to burden anyone else, and sometimes they probably don't even realise how much they need help.
I can't change what happened to Grantley or take away what my sister and family have been through.
But I can try to do something positive with my own experience.
After spending this year focusing on building myself back up, putting on some size and muscle through a bulk. It's now time to start cutting the weight back down again.
But this time, I wanted to do more than just lose the weight. So I thought why not use that as an opportunity to raise some money and awareness at the same time.
For every 100 grams I lose, I'll donate $10 of my own money to this fundraiser.
Hopefully, it can raise some money for an organisation that helps men who are struggling, but more importantly, I hope it starts conversations.
I've set the fundraising goal at $2,605, to represent the date we lost Grantley - 26/05. It's a small way for me to keep his memory connected to something positive and to use the date that changed our family forever to help support other men who may be struggling.
Mental health is never going to be something we completely solve. But if talking about my own experiences makes someone else feel a little more comfortable talking about theirs, or encourages someone to check in on a mate, then I think it's worth doing.
So that's what this fundraiser is about for me.
Looking after ourselves, looking after our mates, and making it a little easier for people to speak up when they're not okay.
If you'd like to support the fundraiser, I'd really appreciate it. And if you can't donate, that's completely fine too, sharing this or simply checking in on someone you care about can make a difference.
