A woman who lived on takeaways and ready meals lost more than seven stone and completely transformed her life to become one of the UK’s top Thai boxers. Jodie Clunan says she went “from fat to fit to fighter” after a carb-loaded convenience food diet saw her go up to just over 17 stones.
She started to put weight on in her late teens and early 20s when she moved out from home and was living on her own. “I was just eating anything quick I could throw in the oven,” she said, “and in the daytime it was always a Subway for lunch, a McDonald's or a Greggs to take back to my desk. My weight crept up gradually over a few years, but I just buried my head. 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.”
Looking back, 31-year-old Jodie admits she had no real interest in exercise and tried every fad diet without success. It wasn’t until she was getting ready for a Christmas night out and found she could no longer fit into anything that she decided something had to change.
“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,” she remembers. “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.”
Jodie, who lives in Wallasey, noticed on social media that a girl she’d worked with had been Thai boxing. “I got in touch and asked what it was like. She said I’d love it, it was right up my street, so I messaged Dockside Fitness in Liverpool to ask how I signed up.
“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?
“But everyone was so nice, showing me what to do, and I got such a buzz from it. When I got home, I was shattered and my face was the colour of a tomato for about four hours, but I said to my mum, ‘I loved it’. She gave it a couple of months before I got bored again, but I never did.”
After her first session in January 2014, Jodie got the Thai boxing bug big time. She went from sessions twice a week to three times and four, then started adding in PTs with owner James. “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 weight 106kg, she had her first Thai boxing contest at 59kg in 2016 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 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.”
