Previously, he drank a case of beer and ate 3 kilograms of dumplings a day.
Sometimes, to push off, you need to be at rock bottom. In 2015, Alexander Teslya lost everything: his son turned away from him, his wife left him, and no one would hire him. The only thing the man had left was his 270 kilograms of weight. Then he realized that he needed to change something in his life. We tell the motivating story of a man who found the strength to change.
The weight started to come on in childhood.
From early childhood, no one limited Alexander in food. His father worked as the head of a large farm and brought sweets home in bags, and his grandparents allowed the child to eat until he was full.
“It was condensed milk, Pepsi-Cola… I loved sweets,” recalled Alexander Teslya, “and I began to rapidly gain weight even in the first grade.
The needle on the scale flew up with each passing year. Alexander admits that thanks to sports in high school, he still kept in shape, but by the eleventh grade, the guy had already gained 125 kilograms. At the same time, Alexander had no problems with his classmates – he grew up a hooligan and enjoyed authority among his peers. Problems due to weight began outside the school walls.
– My father spoiled me himself, he decided to fix the situation himself – and sent me to study at the Krasnodar Aviation School, – Alexander said, – bunk beds, I was assigned to the second tier. And when the guy from below saw that the net had sagged almost to his face, he said: “I will not sleep under it!”
Alexander calls the first six months at the school hell: unlike his classmates, the cadets did not ignore their excess weight. The student had to use his fists to explain that he was worth something.
Daily training helped Alexander lose weight – in just one year he lost 42 kilograms and weighed 82. The weight remained the same until his third year, and then the guy got married and moved from the barracks to a rented apartment.
— Relaxation began, free attendance. We rented an apartment, and by the third year I was already living at home, — Alexander recalled. — My wife cooked, and I gained weight very quickly in a year.
3 kilos of dumplings and a case of beer
Having relaxed, Alexander regained the kilograms he had lost in college in a matter of months, and then began to rapidly gain weight further. The man did not limit his insatiable appetite in any way, on the contrary, he even came up with his own gluttony ceremonies.
— My favorite dish is pelmeni, since childhood, — Alexander admitted. — I had a whole ritual of eating pelmeni: a kilogram of pelmeni with ground turkey, with broth, I could drink a liter of vodka. Then the second pelmeni with ground pork and beef or just pork, another half a liter of vodka. And then there could be pork, beef or seafood. And another kilogram of pelmeni, and another liter of vodka.
This is not a plan for a week – Alexander ate all three kilograms of pelmeni in one day. But there was something in his life that he loved even more – beer.
“My belly, which reached my knees, and my size 10 chest were also due to my colossal love for beer,” Alexander recalled. “By the age of thirty, I could drink a case of beer, 20 bottles, easily, in one sitting, without getting up from the table.”
Alexander himself did not notice how he could only weigh himself at the slaughterhouse. One day, taking another portion of meat for pelmeni, he stepped on the scales out of curiosity – they showed 272 kilograms.
The man’s obesity caused a breakdown in his relationship with his family. His son was the first to lose it: when the boy turned 10, he said he was ashamed to go out with his dad like that.
– When the child was already 13 years old, he said – I don’t want a father like you. Our relationship with him completely deteriorated, – Alexander admitted, – and with my wife it also completely deteriorated, and on May 5, 2015, she divorced me.
Left alone, Alexander moved from the Cossack village to Krasnodar. Having moved into an apartment, the man locked the doors and went on a drinking binge.
“I thought I would die from alcohol – so be it. I didn’t want to live,” Alexander confessed.
In those days, not only his wife and son turned away from Alexander, but all his relatives, except his uncle and mother, stopped communicating with him. No one would hire the man because of his excess weight. He couldn’t even wash himself, because his belly didn’t fit in the shower stall. Then Alexander realized it was time to change his life.
“He got down on his knees and cried”
To start life from scratch, Alexander gave up beer, which he had been drinking by the liter for the past ten years.
— I completely gave up drinking alcohol. This was the first step to somehow correcting the situation with excess weight.
Then, to avoid breaking down, the man began working all day long. He still wasn’t hired for any position, so he decided to get a job as a taxi driver. Having bought a car, Alexander began driving passengers from morning until late evening, not giving himself time for a snack.
“I left at 6 a.m., arrived before 6 p.m., washed myself, cleaned myself as best I could, ate,” Alexander said. “For the first three months, I didn’t eat anything except buckwheat porridge and poultry.”
After eating, Alexander had a few hours left before bed – he went to bed every day no later than 10 p.m. And then everything repeated itself.
This regime helped Alexander immediately start losing weight. Every day he lost a couple of kilos. Because of the fast pace, the man felt chills every day, and his temperature sometimes dropped below 36 degrees. But he continued moving forward.
“Those were the three hardest months,” Alexander admits. “They say men don’t cry, but I cried once a week for sure. I could get down on my knees and cry. I was so hungry and I wanted to drink beer so much.”
The man’s craving for alcohol passed only after a year and a half. After another six months, the desire to overeat disappeared. Instead of drinking and gluttony, Alexander began working out in the gym – he walked on a treadmill at a speed of five kilometers per hour. And thanks to this, in four months he lost another 50 kilograms.
Alexander liked the result so much that he could no longer stop, and eventually the diet and regime led him to anorexia.
“I got so into it that I developed anorexia. When you start enjoying losing a kilogram or two every day, you stop eating one day,” Alexander explained. “I had a record: I didn’t eat anything for 13 days, I only drank water.”
Thus, Alexander lost weight from 272 kilograms to 63 – this is the smallest number on the scales in his entire journey. When acquaintances saw the man, they unanimously said that he was sick and at this rate he would drive himself to the grave. Alexander was most frightened by the comment that only people with oncology lose weight like that, and he immediately ran to the doctor.
“I went through all the checkups in Krasnodar, they told me – I’m alive and well, but I have dystrophy,” said Alexander. “And I thought: “Damn, that’s cool! Now I need to do something with my skin.”
In one operation, Alexander had hanging skin cut off from his chest, back, arms and stomach – in total, the surgeons cut off about 10 kilograms.
The operation almost sent the man to the other world. After cutting off such a huge amount of skin, Alexander began to have problems with his kidneys – according to him, they failed due to severe blood loss. Then COVID hit, and the weakened man instantly suffered damage to 86% of his lungs.
— The chances that I would stay alive were less than less. And no one believed that my kidneys would start working, — Alexander admits. — There was nothing left of my lungs… But that’s how much immunity I have.
Alexander suffered two clinical deaths, but managed to pull through. And after all that he has experienced, he feels like a new person.
“You have to love yourself the way you are”
Having fully recovered from the operation and illness, Alexander decided that he wanted to help other people. The man received a trainer’s diploma and helps people go through the difficult path to the ideal body.
— Often people need psychological support, help. And I am a person who has independently overcome gluttony, independently overcome alcoholism, I can tell what a person feels, — Alexander explained, — this is the kind of help I provide to people.
Alexander himself feels great. Having lost 200 kilograms, he got rid of his complexes and is trying to improve his personal life.
“I’ve become a completely different person. I can absolutely calmly approach a girl I like, ask her for her phone number, see her, meet,” Alexander boasts. “Girls really like my appearance, healthy diet, sports.
According to Alexander, he is not afraid of gaining weight again – after everything he has been through, he is no longer drawn to food. But the man is afraid of picking up a bottle again.
“The only fear I have is if I drink. After some time, I’ll wake up walking on Red Square with a bottle of vodka,” Alexander said. “That’s probably my biggest fear.”
The main thing that Alexander understood on his path to a new life is that you need to love yourself, no matter what you are.
— You have to love yourself as you are. I loved myself at 270 kilograms. Then I began to love myself in perspective — as who I would become. And now I love myself as I am.
