Media personality Willis Raburu has disclosed that he is a victim of stress eating.
While documenting his weight loss journey, Willis disclosed that his feel-good hormones are activated with food.
The energetic entertainer further explained that the isolation phase of the pandemic saw him add a huge chunk of weight and also the stress of dealing with child loss and divorce.
“It was in 2020, I went through my divorce, child loss, I stress eat when am stressed I eat I don’t want anything else that’s how I deal with my stress for me happy hormone feeling comes in food because the food won’t judge me, it won’t talk back,” he narrated.
Weight loss surgery
Willis says he was forced to undergo weight loss surgery for the sake of his health since going to the gym did not work out for him adding that after the procedure he found out that he had life life-threatening underlying condition.
“I had the surgery sometime in May and I was told ningengoja December because we were not sure if I could have made it because of the cholesterol fat pressure level, they also told me the problem seems to have been there for one and a half or two years, when you look back it’s because I did the surgery in 2022,” Willis added.
“After the surgery, I had complications not because of the surgery but because my doctor told me I had underlying issues, I had high blood pressure nilipimwa oxygen ilikuwea low, they had to put an oxygen mask because I wasn’t getting enough oxygen in my heart, after doing tests on my chest, the cardiologist told me; “It looks like your vessels are kinder thinning” that’s why I had high blood pressure the blood is pumping but my vessels are thinning around the heart.”
Raburu also mentioned that the gastric bypass surgery which cost him between Ksh600K and Ksh900K was necessary to redefine himself. He added that it helped him cut his food intake which will gradually help him shed more weight.
Currently, he weighs 112 kg from the previous 164 kg.
Body shaming
The father of two further disclosed that he had been bullied way back in his childhood up to his adulthood because of his weight.
“For me, it goes way back by the time I was in class 8 I was weighing 100 kgs, back then people would make fun of me because of my weight,” he narrated.
“It was stressing, hurting and disturbing. It got to me a lot of times. Sometimes you’ve just posted a picture, but the comments, what persons are saying… And it’s more of how they’re saying it. They’re very vulgar and ruthless. I remember one time it sounded funny, I laughed but then asked myself huyu ameniambia nini.”
He further recalled being mocked by a radio presenter whom he had to confront and demand an apology from.
“Sometimes it got to a point where I didn’t read comments, There’s a time a radio presenter dissed me on the comment. I told him dude we’re supposed to be together and you know what you’re doing is wrong. Then he said no no am just doing it for laughs. So I told him to do it the right way, go to a stage, get a microphone and make people laugh. Don’t laugh and benefit off somebody’s pain,” he said.
Raburu says although the radio personality (whom he did not name) apologized, he did not delete the hateful comment and he had to do it.
“Of course, he apologised but he didn’t take down the comment, I am the one who had to go a day later and delete it because he was enjoying the moment,” he said.