A woman who gained 17 stone from eating microwave meals and takeaways has transformed her body and become one of the UK’s top Thai boxers. Jodie Clunan said she would eat Subway every day for lunch, and then snack on Greggs or McDonald's after.
The 31-year-old started putting on weight in her late teens and early 20s. At the time she was living on her own having just left home and admits she developed poor eating habits.
“I was just eating anything quick I could throw in the oven,” Jodie, who is from the Wirral, said.
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“And in the daytime it was always a Subway for lunch, a McDonalds or a Greggs to take back to my desk. My weight crept up gradually over a few years, but I just buried my head."
Jodie's diet left her struggling to fit into her clothes, but she was in denial about her weight loss, instead blaming 'rubbish sizing'.
She added: "I’d tell myself Primark sizing was rubbish that’s why I needed a bigger one, or I’d want something to feel a bit looser so I’d get a size up. Before you know it you’re in Simply Be looking in the 20/22 section.”
But then one Christmas as she was getting ready for a night out, things finally came to a head and Jodie was left in tears on her bedroom floor. This was the moment she knew things had to change.
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“I was sitting with all my dresses spread out around me and none of them fitted. I just sat on the floor between them all and cried my eyes out.
"I thought, how have I allowed myself to get this big? I was so miserable, I didn’t want to be in any photos, I didn’t want to do anything or go out. I’m usually really outgoing, the life and soul of the party, and I’d stopped being any of that.
"I just wanted to hide in the background all the time. That was when I thought, I don’t want to be this person anymore. I need to do something.”
Inspired by a former colleague on social media, Jodie decided to try Muy Thai Boxing at a gym in Liverpool.
“On the first day I walked into a gym full of men, there wasn’t another woman in sight, and I was terrified. They’d all been doing Thai boxing for years, I was this 17 stone woman and I thought, what am I doing here?"
After her first session in January 2014, Jodie got the Thai boxing bug. She went from doing two sessions a week to four, then started adding in PTs with Dockside Fitness owner James.
She said: “I’d do a PT at 6am, get a shower and go to work, get back at 5pm for another PT and then classes started at 6pm. That was my life for two years.”
As her fitness improved, the first stone and a half dropped off and when her weight loss plateaued, seeing a nutritionist to balance her diet helped her lose another three stones. Keen to take on her first fight, Jodie did an online degree in sports and exercise nutrition so she could tailor her food to her training sessions.
Having once weighed 106kg, she had her first Thai boxing contest at 59kg in 2016 in Birkenhead and stopped her opponent in the third round.
Within her first year of competition, she won all five fights, going on to compete in the biggest shows in the country and rising through the ranks to number 3 in the UK.
In March 2020 she was halfway through a fight camp to challenge for the world title when Covid hit and, with contact sports one of the last to get back to normal, she lost almost two years of top-level training.
Instead, Jodie - who has now lost over 7st - decided to focus on coaching, and in January last year she moved from her previous career in freight forwarding to become a partner in the gym where she trains.
“Women members easily outnumber men now and I get quite a lot of more plus-sized girls coming to classes,” said Jodie. “They feel more comfortable around me because they know I’ve been there.”
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