May 13, 2025 • 10 mins
Former newsreader Hamish McKay has opened up about his dramatic 50kg weight loss.
The long-time broadcaster revealed he was was suffering several health problems after his weight climbed to 135 kilos.
Mackay says his blood pressure was running high and his cholesterol was 'horrendous' - and something needed to be done.
"The signs were there - even though I could hide it, I bluffed my way."
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from news Talk zed be
follow this and our Wide Ranger podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
This is going to be an interesting discussion. Hamish Mackay
is a name you'd know very well, sports caster and
now real estate agent. He shared a post on LinkedIn
that has been picked up by news papers around the
world funnily enough, and it was very honest and I'll
paraphrase some of it here. He wrote, thanks to life
saving beriatric surgery, he went from one hundred and thirty
(00:38):
five kilograms to eighty two kilograms. And we've got Hamish
on the line to have a chat. Hamish, get a mates,
how are you, gentlemen?
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I'm very well. Thank you fighting fit ah.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
Yeah, well you must be surprised how much this LinkedIn
post of yours has blown up globally.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Yeah. Well, it's interesting because everywhere I've been nobody recognizes me.
One of my favorite things go out to the yielding
sales of Kacer in January and not a soul of
about people who I said hello to head any year
who I was. I had to reintroduce myself and that
was sort of a catalyst. So a couple of people
are starting to go what's going on? They I had
a few people who genuinely who saw me and didn't
(01:18):
want to approach me because they felt bad that I
must have had some sort of life threatening disease or
something had happened, so they didn't approach me. And you know,
so in the end, I need to put this out
there because as I got better and better and healthier
and healthier, I realized that. And people have come to me,
probably a dozen people. Would you talk to my brother,
(01:38):
would you talk to my brother and all my sibling
you know, and say, you know, do this if you
can get the opportunity. So that kind of prompted me
to go, well, I'll go to a slightly wider audience.
But you can't do this without putting up the good
with the bad and the ugly. And I had to
put up a couple of uglies, which was a catalyst
for me saying, you know, you got to do something
(01:59):
about this. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
Well, I never really thought of you, I mean watched
you for a very long time. I never really thought
of you as a large, larger gentleman. You see to
hold it pretty well. What do you think caused your
your your weight gain?
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Yeah, also I was most of my time in the
years of T three, I was probably about one hundred
and ten kilos, so I can hide it under a
nice suit and the right sort of light thing. I
had a big enough frame to get away with it,
but I still had one hundred and ten kilos. I mean,
I mean some people would call it fat shaving or whatever,
but amongst the sports team, it was always, oh, my guys,
(02:33):
got that's where the missing pillow is, you know, Clint
Brown and Clay. But it was all good fun. But
what wasn't good fun was even of one hundred and
ten kilos, which is twenty five kilos lighter than my peak.
My blood sugars, blood pressure and everything else was Chlester
was horrendous. So you know, there was the signs were there,
(02:55):
even though I could, even though I could hide it,
you know, were a you know bluff my way put
it that way.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
What did you try first before you went to surgery?
I mentioned, you know, you know, if you're concerned about it,
you probably tried a whole lot of different things.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I tried different diets, and I mean I did twice.
In my late forties. I got pretty fit and roads
the retro cycle to a Wellington Auckland. I mean that's
one hundred and twenty k's a day, wow, you know,
following the foot seeds of the old Dulux tour and
not that twice, but I hardly dropped a kilo and
you know, and I said to myself, you know, gods,
you're putting your you know, you're riding four or five
(03:31):
hours every day, seven days in a row, and you train,
you know what? My and one day it took a while,
and the initial discussions with a surgeon and a surgical
team was that you've got a brother who's genetically one
hundred percent the same as you, but he is as
skinny as a rake and can never put on weight
(03:51):
and never will, and why you and you will, So
you have to accept that it's probably okay to except
that you are, you know, you know, on the fat side.
And then a reason for this. But today we can
do something about it, and we can do it pretty
and safely, and we do it really well. So and
(04:11):
I had an opportunity that came about from a sort
of a secondary thing that I'm dealing with in the
public health system, and the basically that one of the
doctors said how long you've been this fat? You know,
you didn't quite say it as brutally as that was
a comedy. Yeah comment, he said, because these things here
said yes to me, you will. You'll be dead pretty
soon these readings. And that's when I went, Okay, I'm
(04:32):
happy to go unto this program and let's see for progresses.
See how we go. Yeah, do you reckon?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
There is still a bit of a taboo around that,
the bariatric surgery Hamoush. I mean, there'll be candless of
people listening right now that it did everything you did.
You were a fit guy, I take it. You know
you tried the diet route and just whatever you tried,
you can't shift that weight. There'll be thousands listening in
that situation right now, but that that pathway to surgery.
(04:57):
They might be freaking out a little bit, thinking that's extreme,
but you're saying for you and for countless others, it
can be life saving.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Yeah, I believe so. I mean, and you know there
are people who can go, oh, you know, you fatties
need to do something about it. Well. I had to
lose twenty kilos before the operation, right, so there was
a pretty big you know, I got into good shape again.
My wife and I went, well, why are you doing this? Well,
the reason your artist, because you'll put it back on.
And that was. That was. But that was on a
(05:26):
diet where suddenly tomatoes started to taste like mandarins and
yoga like the richest ice cream you could. So it
was working. You know, those things are there, they do work.
But I went exponentially at this weight, my two dodgy knees,
which funnily enough I don't have anymore because I can
jog again and not only shuffle like a fifty nine
(05:47):
year old, I can actually run, you know. And so
I was looking at needs replacements, hip replacements. So I
believe that yes, some of the some of my text
take over the years has got I have got back
in this particular procedure. But I'm saying that a lot
exponentially because I would have just been one of those
cupcases fixed there. And probably the fact that I'm really
(06:08):
lucky that, you know, the bike rides is a disthmatica
of my lungs were okay, I want to hang around.
Sucked every last dollar out of the health system. Now,
going from seven different piolls to taking nothing. I think
that that's pretty you know, a pretty good case for
to encourage people that those are going to afford to
do it, go and do it tomorrow. Put you know,
(06:30):
those who need to get into the system, please try
and do it. And you know, and I've been overwhelmed
by the sort of the reaction to the to this article,
you know, the article we've had, because it's just like
I've already probably got ten private messages, more on social
media and more people just coming on the phone and saying, hey,
can you can you tell us about it? And and
(06:52):
if you put yourself out there like that, then you
have to be prepared to respond to those people as well.
No I have. I'm trying, one by one. I'm getting back.
You know, here's my story.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
We're talking to broadcasting legion Homus mackay about here's decision
to get surge that ended up with some dropping from
one hundred and thirty five kgs down to a spelt
eighty five. What was the what was the actual surgery process?
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Like, yeah, so it's I mean, it's it's not a
it's look you go the process. I'm trying to think
what was a three or four hours And I know
there's a whole raft of these various stomach stapling, stomach
removal data nages you can have done now, so there's
(07:39):
no one size fit door. Mine was was a thing
called a rumix y, which is a I stuffered a
lot from refluxing things. So they that you can never
get that again because of the way they what they
take out and what they recreated there. I had a
little bit of problem afterwards, was healed so well that
my issry to my stomach killed over. And when you
(08:02):
get into that weight loss, when you've been big and
you and you enjoy being losing weight, you probably go
a little too. I went down to about seventy five years.
I was a bag of buns. But and now now
I just you know, eat eat all day. We're not,
you know, within reason and well, and I can't put
(08:22):
anything on over about eighty two eighty three kgs. So
and the minute you start exercise, of course you burn
it off. But yeah, it's you know, it's the procedure itself.
Recovery is a little little but you've just got to
be gentle with your coming. You can't do much for
the first month or so, and you slowly you're on
(08:44):
sort of pure pure food. But remarkably you lose weight
pretty damn quickly. And but like I say, the public
system obviously has got a very struck rule. If you
don't lose the weight, sorry, no can do. And there
are plenty of cases of where they've follen to do it.
So no, no, you haven't done what we needed to do,
(09:05):
because your liver is the one that will tell you
whether you've done what's been asked. Not so much of
the actual weight loss. It's the reduction of all the
bad stuff. And if they look at your living and
go no information, Bang, we'll get on with this. It was.
It was pretty stricted. There was no knocking around. There's
been some incredible like I would say, kind of like
(09:27):
I described the period from when somebody came in and
wrapped the guts out of TV three ten years ago,
a bit of a comfortably that black hole where you know,
I've been selling real estate and Doune and they had
a you know, I had a pretty successful radio show
with Richard Lowe that went by the way to the
overall sort of station going by the way. But you know,
(09:49):
nothing hasn't been hasn't been bad. None of it's been bloody,
chemotherapy or anything like actual problems that people are actually facing,
just you know, just just sort of coasting a long period. Well, now,
out the back end of that, my awareness of what's
important and what's great and good in my life has
risen dramatically. My awareness of what I need to address
(10:11):
in terms of whether that's relationships past, you know, things
that have gone roll is also massively increased. That's a
bit of a double edged sword. But hell, I wouldn't
swap with the life. You're to take a bed to
a year for anything?
Speaker 4 (10:25):
Yeah, well, good on you. So, I mean, must feel
so different to be eighty five kj's when you've been
one hundred and thirty five dropping fifty kgs. And look,
I check out that LinkedIn post because it's it's very
open and honest and good on your Hamish, and thanks
for talking to us today.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah, thanks very much, Hamish, and you're certainly looking good.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Nick.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Now for more from News Talks B listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to a podcast from news Talk zed be
follow this and our Wide Ranger podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
This is going to be an interesting discussion. Hamish Mackay
is a name you'd know very well, sports caster and
now real estate agent. He shared a post on LinkedIn
that has been picked up by news papers around the
world funnily enough, and it was very honest and I'll
paraphrase some of it here. He wrote, thanks to life
saving beriatric surgery, he went from one hundred and thirty
(00:38):
five kilograms to eighty two kilograms. And we've got Hamish
on the line to have a chat. Hamish, get a mates,
how are you, gentlemen?
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I'm very well. Thank you fighting fit ah.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
Yeah, well you must be surprised how much this LinkedIn
post of yours has blown up globally.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Yeah. Well, it's interesting because everywhere I've been nobody recognizes me.
One of my favorite things go out to the yielding
sales of Kacer in January and not a soul of
about people who I said hello to head any year
who I was. I had to reintroduce myself and that
was sort of a catalyst. So a couple of people
are starting to go what's going on? They I had
a few people who genuinely who saw me and didn't
(01:18):
want to approach me because they felt bad that I
must have had some sort of life threatening disease or
something had happened, so they didn't approach me. And you know,
so in the end, I need to put this out
there because as I got better and better and healthier
and healthier, I realized that. And people have come to me,
probably a dozen people. Would you talk to my brother,
(01:38):
would you talk to my brother and all my sibling
you know, and say, you know, do this if you
can get the opportunity. So that kind of prompted me
to go, well, I'll go to a slightly wider audience.
But you can't do this without putting up the good
with the bad and the ugly. And I had to
put up a couple of uglies, which was a catalyst
for me saying, you know, you got to do something
(01:59):
about this. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
Well, I never really thought of you, I mean watched
you for a very long time. I never really thought
of you as a large, larger gentleman. You see to
hold it pretty well. What do you think caused your
your your weight gain?
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Yeah, also I was most of my time in the
years of T three, I was probably about one hundred
and ten kilos, so I can hide it under a
nice suit and the right sort of light thing. I
had a big enough frame to get away with it,
but I still had one hundred and ten kilos. I mean,
I mean some people would call it fat shaving or whatever,
but amongst the sports team, it was always, oh, my guys,
(02:33):
got that's where the missing pillow is, you know, Clint
Brown and Clay. But it was all good fun. But
what wasn't good fun was even of one hundred and
ten kilos, which is twenty five kilos lighter than my peak.
My blood sugars, blood pressure and everything else was Chlester
was horrendous. So you know, there was the signs were there,
(02:55):
even though I could, even though I could hide it,
you know, were a you know bluff my way put
it that way.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
What did you try first before you went to surgery?
I mentioned, you know, you know, if you're concerned about it,
you probably tried a whole lot of different things.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I tried different diets, and I mean I did twice.
In my late forties. I got pretty fit and roads
the retro cycle to a Wellington Auckland. I mean that's
one hundred and twenty k's a day, wow, you know,
following the foot seeds of the old Dulux tour and
not that twice, but I hardly dropped a kilo and
you know, and I said to myself, you know, gods,
you're putting your you know, you're riding four or five
(03:31):
hours every day, seven days in a row, and you train,
you know what? My and one day it took a while,
and the initial discussions with a surgeon and a surgical
team was that you've got a brother who's genetically one
hundred percent the same as you, but he is as
skinny as a rake and can never put on weight
(03:51):
and never will, and why you and you will, So
you have to accept that it's probably okay to except
that you are, you know, you know, on the fat side.
And then a reason for this. But today we can
do something about it, and we can do it pretty
and safely, and we do it really well. So and
(04:11):
I had an opportunity that came about from a sort
of a secondary thing that I'm dealing with in the
public health system, and the basically that one of the
doctors said how long you've been this fat? You know,
you didn't quite say it as brutally as that was
a comedy. Yeah comment, he said, because these things here
said yes to me, you will. You'll be dead pretty
soon these readings. And that's when I went, Okay, I'm
(04:32):
happy to go unto this program and let's see for progresses.
See how we go. Yeah, do you reckon?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
There is still a bit of a taboo around that,
the bariatric surgery Hamoush. I mean, there'll be candless of
people listening right now that it did everything you did.
You were a fit guy, I take it. You know
you tried the diet route and just whatever you tried,
you can't shift that weight. There'll be thousands listening in
that situation right now, but that that pathway to surgery.
(04:57):
They might be freaking out a little bit, thinking that's extreme,
but you're saying for you and for countless others, it
can be life saving.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Yeah, I believe so. I mean, and you know there
are people who can go, oh, you know, you fatties
need to do something about it. Well. I had to
lose twenty kilos before the operation, right, so there was
a pretty big you know, I got into good shape again.
My wife and I went, well, why are you doing this? Well,
the reason your artist, because you'll put it back on.
And that was. That was. But that was on a
(05:26):
diet where suddenly tomatoes started to taste like mandarins and
yoga like the richest ice cream you could. So it
was working. You know, those things are there, they do work.
But I went exponentially at this weight, my two dodgy knees,
which funnily enough I don't have anymore because I can
jog again and not only shuffle like a fifty nine
(05:47):
year old, I can actually run, you know. And so
I was looking at needs replacements, hip replacements. So I
believe that yes, some of the some of my text
take over the years has got I have got back
in this particular procedure. But I'm saying that a lot
exponentially because I would have just been one of those
cupcases fixed there. And probably the fact that I'm really
(06:08):
lucky that, you know, the bike rides is a disthmatica
of my lungs were okay, I want to hang around.
Sucked every last dollar out of the health system. Now,
going from seven different piolls to taking nothing. I think
that that's pretty you know, a pretty good case for
to encourage people that those are going to afford to
do it, go and do it tomorrow. Put you know,
(06:30):
those who need to get into the system, please try
and do it. And you know, and I've been overwhelmed
by the sort of the reaction to the to this article,
you know, the article we've had, because it's just like
I've already probably got ten private messages, more on social
media and more people just coming on the phone and saying, hey,
can you can you tell us about it? And and
(06:52):
if you put yourself out there like that, then you
have to be prepared to respond to those people as well.
No I have. I'm trying, one by one. I'm getting back.
You know, here's my story.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
We're talking to broadcasting legion Homus mackay about here's decision
to get surge that ended up with some dropping from
one hundred and thirty five kgs down to a spelt
eighty five. What was the what was the actual surgery process?
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Like, yeah, so it's I mean, it's it's not a
it's look you go the process. I'm trying to think
what was a three or four hours And I know
there's a whole raft of these various stomach stapling, stomach
removal data nages you can have done now, so there's
(07:39):
no one size fit door. Mine was was a thing
called a rumix y, which is a I stuffered a
lot from refluxing things. So they that you can never
get that again because of the way they what they
take out and what they recreated there. I had a
little bit of problem afterwards, was healed so well that
my issry to my stomach killed over. And when you
(08:02):
get into that weight loss, when you've been big and
you and you enjoy being losing weight, you probably go
a little too. I went down to about seventy five years.
I was a bag of buns. But and now now
I just you know, eat eat all day. We're not,
you know, within reason and well, and I can't put
(08:22):
anything on over about eighty two eighty three kgs. So
and the minute you start exercise, of course you burn
it off. But yeah, it's you know, it's the procedure itself.
Recovery is a little little but you've just got to
be gentle with your coming. You can't do much for
the first month or so, and you slowly you're on
(08:44):
sort of pure pure food. But remarkably you lose weight
pretty damn quickly. And but like I say, the public
system obviously has got a very struck rule. If you
don't lose the weight, sorry, no can do. And there
are plenty of cases of where they've follen to do it.
So no, no, you haven't done what we needed to do,
(09:05):
because your liver is the one that will tell you
whether you've done what's been asked. Not so much of
the actual weight loss. It's the reduction of all the
bad stuff. And if they look at your living and
go no information, Bang, we'll get on with this. It was.
It was pretty stricted. There was no knocking around. There's
been some incredible like I would say, kind of like
(09:27):
I described the period from when somebody came in and
wrapped the guts out of TV three ten years ago,
a bit of a comfortably that black hole where you know,
I've been selling real estate and Doune and they had
a you know, I had a pretty successful radio show
with Richard Lowe that went by the way to the
overall sort of station going by the way. But you know,
(09:49):
nothing hasn't been hasn't been bad. None of it's been bloody,
chemotherapy or anything like actual problems that people are actually facing,
just you know, just just sort of coasting a long period. Well, now,
out the back end of that, my awareness of what's
important and what's great and good in my life has
risen dramatically. My awareness of what I need to address
(10:11):
in terms of whether that's relationships past, you know, things
that have gone roll is also massively increased. That's a
bit of a double edged sword. But hell, I wouldn't
swap with the life. You're to take a bed to
a year for anything?
Speaker 4 (10:25):
Yeah, well, good on you. So, I mean, must feel
so different to be eighty five kj's when you've been
one hundred and thirty five dropping fifty kgs. And look,
I check out that LinkedIn post because it's it's very
open and honest and good on your Hamish, and thanks
for talking to us today.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah, thanks very much, Hamish, and you're certainly looking good.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Nick.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Now for more from News Talks B listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcast on iHeartRadio.
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