Broadcaster Hamish McKay opens up about his dramatic 50kg weight loss

Renowned Kiwi broadcaster Hamish McKay looks very different these days.

The television presenter and former 3News sports reader has lost 55kg in recent months and says it is the best decision he could have made.

McKay spoke to Herald Now’s Ryan Bridge about his decision to have bariatric surgery and how it has transformed his life.

“I could bluff being a certain weight because I could get fit and work around that. But then it got to a stage, in the last 15 years, when it was probably about 2kg extra a year and suddenly I was a huge, huge man,” he said.

At 135kg and with his health at risk, McKay knew he had to make drastic changes.

Hamish McKay before his weight loss. Photo / File

“I’d seen what my grandfather and father went through, and I chose, after a lot of deliberation, to go down the bariatric path,” he said.

“The good thing about that was I had to lose 20kg before I started, and I did that on my own. It almost made me go, ‘oh, do I need to do this?’ but then I thought, ‘nah, you’ll just go back’.”

Broadcaster Hamish McKay has lost more than 50kg and says he has never felt better. Photo / Herald Now

McKay recalled that, before his weight loss and for most of his adult life, everything he did felt “laboured”, as a friend had put it. “Now that’s gone. I’ve got more hours in the day,” he says.

He is still amazed by how much easier life has become, saying that a few days ago he got off a plane and was dragging his 22kg suitcase with him, thinking it felt pretty heavy, when it dawned on him that he had lost more than twice that weight. “No wonder you feel better,” he thought to himself.

“The hard thing is you don’t see what you’d become,” the award-winning broadcaster shared, admitting that he looks back at images from before his weight loss and thinks he looked “appalling”.

“I feel 150 times better. It makes massive changes to everything you do.”