How a weight loss drug inspired ‘big unit' Dan Repacholi's ‘ministry for men' idea
As she accepts a corflute from her local federal member to display on her front lawn, Liz Priestley takes a look up and down at Dan Repacholi, then up and down again.
'You look fantastic,' enthuses Priestley, who lives in Singleton in the NSW Hunter Valley. A loyal Labor voter who follows politics closely, Priestley is shocked by Repacholi's rapid weight loss since she last saw him. She wants to know how he did it.
Repacholi responds that his slimmed-down frame is due to neither diet nor exercise. Instead, he has lost around 30 kilograms since September by starting a treatment of Mounjaro, an Ozempic-style injectable medicine that helps suppress appetite and encourage weight loss.
The self-described 'big unit' of a man sports a distinctive bushranger-style beard, stands a little over two metres tall and has struggled to control his weight throughout adulthood. The 47-year-old is a hamburger aficionado who prints an annual calendar showing him chomping down on a burger from a different fast food joint in his electorate each month. He's also fond of a drink, confessing he and his mates have been known to down 20 schooners of beer each in a single sitting.
'We would smash them down like there was nothing left in the world,' he says when this masthead joins him for a day of campaigning in his electorate of Hunter.
Repacholi has competed at five Olympic Games as a sports shooter and last year hoped to become just the second sitting politician in history to represent Australia at the Olympics, but narrowly failed to qualify (Ric Charlesworth competed in hockey at Los Angeles and Seoul while the member for Perth in the 1980s).
The disappointment of missing out led Repacholi's diet to spin out of control. 'I ate and ate and ate,' he says, explaining how he reached a peak of 152 kilograms last year. He consulted Labor colleagues Mike Freelander and Gordon Reid, both trained doctors, who recommended he try Mounjaro.
'They said to give it a go and it's the best thing I've ever done.'
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