Tom Chilton: I beat my diet demons to become king of the road

Tom Chilton enjoyed the buzz he got from racing

 

AS HE tears around the track at speeds topping 150mph, racing driver Tom Chilton puts his body under incredible physical strain.

 

So it is hard to believe that one of Britain’s most successful ever touring car competitors was once so overweight he could not even fit in the driver’s seat. 

Today, 30-year-old Tom stands over 6ft tall and weighs in at a fairly healthy 14st. 

But the father of two, from Redhill in Surrey, has faced a constant battle with his weight since he was a toddler. 

By the age of four he was already 4st and by the time he was eight, he topped the scales at 8st 12lbs – the same weight as his mother. 

When I got home I would make three peanut butter sandwiches with strawberry jam and wash them down with a pint of milk

Tom Chilton

At 14 his waist had ballooned to a mammoth 44 inches and chest to 42 inches. 

“I started gaining weight as soon as I began eating solid foods,” says Tom, who is married to Eleanor, 25, and has two sons, Frederick, two and six-month-old Rupert. 

“I didn’t like school dinners very much so when I got home I would make three peanut butter sandwiches with strawberry jam and wash them down with a pint of milk. 

I was doing that between meals. Then at the weekend I would eat as much as I could.” 

 

Unlike his younger brother Max, 24, a former Formula One racing driver, Tom took after his father – who once weighed 32st – but has since slimmed down after having gastric bypass surgery. 

Both Max and his mother, however, have always been slender. 

“I was so plump that when the other kids at school did a cross-country run, the teachers used to appoint me as marshal because they were worried about the effects on my joints,” says Tom. 

“At school nobody ever pushed me to do sport, so the weight just kept piling on.” 

Tom’s parents were so concerned that they looked around for a pastime that would help him shed the pounds.

An advertisement in a motoring magazine for young teenagers to race cars caught their attention. 

“They thought it would be good for me to have a goal to help me lose weight.”

 



Tom struggled with his weight from an early age



At 13, Tom was too fat to fit in a go-kart, which is where most budding young drivers cut their competitive teeth. 

But when he got behind the wheel of a proper racing car, something clicked – even though technicians had to fit the biggest racing seat they could find. 

“I realised straight away that I was pretty good at it. I was racing against kids who had  been doing it for years while I had been sitting at home eating pies and doing nothing. 

The buzz I got from racing was incredible, so I started pushing myself harder and harder.” 

Just short of his 14th birthday, Tom became the youngest driver ever to take part in a competitive series and secure a racing licence. 

But his new-found passion meant tackling his weight problems head on if he was to have any chance of success. 

Around the same time, he went to boarding school, where the emphasis was on regular physical activity. 

In less than a year, he lost nearly 10 inches from his waistline as he faced a daily schedule of rowing and running. 

But it was the beginning of a long and difficult struggle to keep the weight off that Tom admits has dogged him throughout his career. 

 

He got into the habit of yo-yo dieting, trying to shed excess weight for races, then piling the pounds back on soon after. 

In racing, weight is paramount. It is estimated that every 10 kilos a driver carries equates to an extra tenth of a second on their lap times. 

“I spent 10 years losing weight for specific races. I found I could lose a stone in just 10 days but then my weight would fluctuate wildly between race meetings. And I kept getting ill because of it. In the end I decided that a yo-yo diet was a ‘no-no diet’."

Tom, who made frequent appearances on BBC2’s hit show Top Gear, finally gained control of his weight in 2013, when he began following the LighterLife Total diet. 

This involved replacing conventional food with four nutritionally-balanced alternatives including bars, shakes, porridge and soups. 

The diet works by keeping nutrition levels high but carbohydrates low, so the body switches to burning fat stores as it main source of energy. 

 

Tom is now able to maintain his weight using his newly-found diet

It aims to provide the body with the daily vitamins and minerals it needs, just with fewer calories. 

Group counselling sessions, meanwhile, also help dieters understand the emotional issues behind over-eating. 

Now Tom has switched to the LighterLife Fast 5:2 plan, which allows normal food consumption for five days but restricts intake on the other two to just 500 – “I lost loads of weight without feeling ill,” he says. 

“And now I’m able to maintain my weight. I don’t have great willpower so it’s a lot easier for me to diet two days a week. And if needs be I can switch to 4:3, limiting my intake on three days of the week. One thing I’ve learnt is that if I have a goal in mind, I will do whatever it takes to achieve it.”