From a photographer's lens to a change in how people live

Eight years ago, in a small town, a photographer was going through his portfolio trying to work out what made some people glow in his pictures. The answer was confidence. Seeing hundreds of people through the lens gave me an unusual vantage point on how the way you feel about yourself changes the way you laugh, smile, stand, and meet the world.

So the first weight-loss experiment was born, on a premise that was radical for a town of twenty thousand people: people who feel good in their body have a better time in front of a camera. I built a four-week programme for my brides. Get fit before the wedding. The results surprised me — not so much on the scale as in how people held themselves. It was not the kilograms. It was walking in as someone who had done something difficult for their own wedding day. Bigger smiles, more ease, and a running joke about the photographer who texts you a weight-loss challenge four weeks out.

Because how you feel about yourself shows in how you speak, how you walk into a room, how you smile for a photograph. And failing to lose weight for years, sometimes decades, wears down your sense of yourself. So yes: it started because I wanted people to feel their best in my photographs. It simply made for better photography.

Years went by, I moved from photography to an office job, and my own belly grew with them. Not overnight — over four years, until I was out of breath climbing the stairs. I knew how to lose weight fast from the work with my brides. The thing I did not know was how to make it hold, so the yo-yo would stop. I lost 23 kg in seven months. From 87 kg and winded after 250 metres, to crossing the finish line of my first marathon at 64 kg.

I tested the same principles with my mother, which made her the first pioneer of the protocol. We got closer over those months, and her results were undeniable enough that she was the one pushing me to take this further. "I never managed to lose more than 7 kg in my whole life, and I was permanently on some diet. I lost 15 in six months, I became a morning person after thirty years of trying, and now I am up at six to walk 10,000 steps. I have started learning Spanish and I am planning to move to Spain." — Vera, 57

And now the experiment runs in public. Not through my lens this time, but through yours — because the only way to really understand it is in your own skin. Wearing what you want. Playing with the people you love. Walking into a room without shrinking. These are all things extra weight quietly takes from you. What we are testing is simple: that this is not about motivation, it is about identity. Otherwise the body always returns to its old shape.