After 100kg weight loss through juice fasts, semi-ketogenic and now a full-on keto diet, father of four is ‘no longer ashamed of my size’
- After flatlining under anaesthesia during an emergency operation ‘because I was fat’, Hongkonger Gill Mahtani vowed to lose the excess kilos he was carrying
- ‘I was 105kg overweight and really unhealthy,’ the father of four says. Juice fasts took care of 60kg, and a semi-ketogenic, then a full keto diet another 40kg
Gill Mahtani remembers being a “fat and chubby” child, in part because of a diet of calorie-dense, processed and convenience foods.
In his mid-teens, he became addicted to hard drugs and lost a good deal of weight. After kicking his addiction 15 years later, he turned to food for comfort – and saw the excess kilograms pile back on.
Over the next few years, Mahtani’s weight ballooned to 180kg (397 pounds) – until a health scare prompted him to spend the next 10 years trying to slim down.
“It was 2011; I was 34 years old and had to be hospitalised for an emergency,” says the now 45-year-old financial consultant and father of four, who was born and raised in Hong Kong and lives in Kowloon.
“The doctor put me under general anaesthesia and I ended up flatlining. For two whole minutes, I was basically dead. When the doctor revived me, he told me that being overweight increases one’s risk of dying while under general anaesthesia – and that I’d flatlined because I was fat.
“He wasn’t wrong. I was 105kg overweight and really unhealthy; all my life, I’d followed a ‘see food’ diet – that is, I would see food and eat it.”
