Dicko speaks to Woman’s Day about his weight-loss journey and his new outlook on healthy food and living life!
So you got your gear off?
Yeah! It’s all a bit of a daze now. I’ve had three moments in my life where that has happened. One was Dancing with the Stars, when they said, “Will Dicko please take to the floor.” Then there was the first live Idol show, at Rod Laver Arena, with 16,000 people screaming. And today when A Current Affair said, “Okay, it’s time to take your shirt off.” It’s the sort of thing I would never, ever have done before. It was the challenge of it.
Was everybody there with their camera phones?
Oh yeah. Nothing gets past someone with a camera phone these days.
You must be very brave.
Or stupid. Or egotistical. Or all three. You know what it was though? I just wanted to challenge myself. And I thought, “What is the most confronting, challenging thing I could possibly do.” And I thought, “Well, that would be taking my shirt off in public.” I thought I’d do it in Burke Street Mall in the middle of Melbourne — because you can’t get much more public than that.
And then I put my Baywatch swimmers on. They weren’t Speedos, but they were shortie swimmers. The funny thing was, they were red, so it was that whole Baywatch look. I wore red swimmers when I first got into the Jenny Craig thing. I wore them for a photoshoot and lay down. Back then I had a rack to rival Pamela Anderson’s. Now I’m a little more Hasselhoff.
What did you do on your break? Did you go somewhere tropical? Because you look very brown!
Australia is tropical! I went to Boomerang Beach. We always go there. It’s just up at the Great Lakes, which is about three hours from Sydney.
You must feel great, going into a new year having lost so much weight?
Look, I do. There’s such a lot going on in my mind. I feel confident for the first time, really.
Whenever I go into Jenny Craig I see pictures of how I used to look. And I feel almost ashamed now that I was that stupid. It’s really bizarre. I never had a problem with the way I looked before, but like most Australian middle-aged blokes, I was in denial.
But since I have lost the weight, and realised how achievable it is, I feel really embarrassed about the weight I was carrying. I feel really stupid for leaving it so long to do something about it. But those are the only negatives. And they are retrospective. But I feel great about myself.
I just went on holidays and it’s liberating being able to put swimmers on and leave the house and walk on the beach without having to cover up and feel really self-conscious about myself and my man boobs.
But it’s not like I have this amazing body now. But it’s more what it should be. More the way I wanted to look.
How was Christmas and New Year’s Eve this year without drinking and overeating?
You know what? I was over the drinking a long time ago. I gave up last New Year’s Day and that didn’t bother me at all. The eating was a challenge, because it’s a season of feasting and we are a very social family.
We are lots of people and we cook big, big meals. And it was really about getting our head around a different style of meal. My tastes have changed. I no longer crave fat and big sumptuous cuts of meat. I am just as much into the idea of fish and vegetables and salads and stuff.
I am perving on making big crispy salads as much as anything. My wife and my girls have bought into it as well. They are really enjoying the residual benefits of having a dad who is really focused on eating and cooking the right meals.
Have they lost weight too?
I think you go through it. Because I am the cook in the house and I love cooking, it’s up to me to put food on the table. So if I am being selfish and putting the sorts of food out there that I feel comfortable eating, then they are. And everyone in our house has got a bit more health conscious about what they are eating.
How much weight have you actually lost now?
My goal was to lose 15kg and I have lost over that now. I have lost a kilo and a half over that. The real question now is where do I stop and what do I want to do? As I said, I haven’t got a ripped, pristine body. I am proud of what I have achieved. But now I’m thinking, well if I’ve done 15kg and above, what do I want to do next? I am feeling I would like to get another 3kg off and just tone my body.
Are you focusing more on fitness now?
Yes. Toning, and making the body feel and look stronger. And just sexier, really. Muscle tone is sexy. Not that big, crazy bodybuilder approach. Just something that is fit, and lean, and healthy.
I would love to think that I have a body that ends up on the cover of Men’s Health magazine. I set these little goals in my own mind. When you look at those beautiful black and white pictures, of men naked from the torso up, I’m thinking well maybe that’s not such a crazy idea. Maybe I could be. Maybe I could be a real inspiration to middle-aged blokes like me.
How long has this journey been going on for you now?
Not a long time really. I think it’s just since September. So just over five months. And that’s all it’s taken for me to change my whole attitude and my whole focus towards fitness and the sorts of food I eat.
How did you go about doing that?
I was told I had to train, twice a week, and so I enlisted the help of a friend of mine, Natalie Gauci, who was the Australian Idol [in 2007].
So she is a trained personal trainer. She is just starting so I was like this, “How about we help each other out. I will become your first client and you can be my first trainer.” She has been very, very supportive. And she is a friend of mine. Even though I didn’t see her over the holidays, and we were in different cities over the break, she would ring me up once a week and say, “Are you doing your homework? Are you doing your exercise?”
So the tables have really turned?
Yes. Now she is keeping a watchful eye on my behaviour and development, rather than the other way around.
What would be your tips for men wanting to do what you have done?
Well first and foremost: give it a go. I think there are too many blokes my age who are absolutely in denial. Telling themselves that it’s not for them; that it can’t be achieved. That they have gone past the point of no return. But I am living proof that that is not the case. You have got to really want to give it a go.
I think you have really got to trust the people you work with as well. I was really fortunate to work with Jenny Craig and a great consultant, Adele, who understood my lifestyle and my failings and weaknesses. And she didn’t judge me. She just worked with me. And I had complete trust in her, and complete trust in the process.
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