Football ground incident helps man shed 17 stone

A man who weighed nearly 30 stone realised he had to lose weight when he got stuck in a Port Vale football ground turnstile.

Steven Duffield, who lost 17 stone in a year, had been through a tough time with the death of both his parents and suffering from depression.

He knew he had to make a change on the day he took his nephews to a football match at Burslem's Vale Park stadium in Stoke-on-Trent on Boxing Day 2022, and told how he changed his habits by tracking his eating, giving up alcohol and walking.

By the third month, he had started walking further, getting up earlier and noticing the world around him open up again, he said.

Talking to BBC Radio Hereford and Worcester, he described how, two or three years ago, his weight escalated from a "tubby but not unhealthy" 14 stone to about 29 stone.

He said he had been living with his parents before he lost them, which ended up with "my depression spiralling, my weight gaining, and health rapidly deteriorating".

The catalyst came on the day he got stuck in the turnstile at Port Vale, he said, describing it as "a powerful, humiliating sort of milestone".

Mr Duffield, who lives in Kidderminster, described his next steps as "nothing unremarkable".

Tracking his eating required a brutal honesty, and he shocked himself with his food intake, he said.

Giving up alcohol helped in two ways - by giving him some control and mental clarity.

In the second month, he started walking and, because he weighed nearly 30 stone, his weight added to the exercise, even if he just walked to the end of the street and back.

"By month three, I started walking further and further, getting up a bit earlier and noticing the world around me again," he said. "It started to open up.

"Simple things like the birds singing, the sunrise and all that kind of thing, I thought I can be part of this world again."

In his first month, he walked six miles but now he is able to walk 25 miles in a day.

He said he had been given an opportunity at life again and was now using his fitness to raise money for Acorns Children's Hospice, after they helped his niece who has a life-limiting genetic disorder and requires permanent care.

Mr Duffield added that the hospice had been a lifeline for his family.

He is now hiking along canals, nature reserves and trails in the West Midlands in a 1,880 mile fundraising challenge – the same distance from Worcester, where the hospice is, to Morocco, the start of the Sahara Desert which he will visit to raise more money later in the year.

He has so far completed 1,200 miles.

"The fact is if you do things simply and you do things often and you win each day, then all these things mount up," he said. "You've just got to take your time and be patient and trust in the results."

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