People
Reiner Calmund only weighs half
Reiner Calmund feels in great shape. Photo: Oliver Dietze/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
He’s been on countless diets with no success. Then the former football manager Reiner Calmund had his stomach reduced and his weight halved.
After his gastric bypass surgery, the former heavyweight Reiner Calmund (73) has almost halved. “Now I weigh an average of 90 to 92 kilos. And I used to be 180 kilos. So that’s half, »said Calmund of the German Press Agency in Saarlouis.
With the reduced weight, his health values have not only improved: “They are now optimal.” In addition, he had become “more mobile in everything”. “I can now play badminton with my daughter,” said the former football manager. And go for a walk. “I feel very fit and fresh.”
And then the pounds dropped
The operation a good two years ago was “the absolutely right decision,” said Calmund. During the procedure, the stomach is reduced by 70 to 80 percent. “So I lost weight without suffering and without starving. And now I can hold my weight very well. I can eat anything, but I’m full sooner.” He still eats sweet things like almond croissants. After the kilos had dropped dozens of times, he still had a “fat apron” on his stomach, which he had removed in the summer of 2021.
Actually, he should have done the surgery earlier, said Calmund. Because before that he had tried again and again to lose weight sustainably. “I went on ten diets and lost about 200 kilos in total. With the yo-yo effect, I definitely gained 280 to 300 kilos – and then I had 80 to 100 kilos more. » Experts had assured him at the time that he could no longer defeat the yo-yo effect for medical reasons and advised him to have a stomach reduction.
As a child, on the other hand, he was extremely narrow, Calmund said. “I was even sent to a home in Iversheim near Münstereifel because of malnutrition.” Even as a teenager he remained thin. “We only had two things: football or robbers and cops games,” he said. The pounds would have started with him from the age of 18. “I had done competitive sports and had a torn ankle. It couldn’t be repaired at the time. And then the calories came marching in whole packs.”
The Rhinelander Calmund has been living in Saarlouis, Saarland, for around ten years with his wife Sylvia and daughter Nicha (11), who the couple adopted from an orphanage in Thailand.