{"id":794964,"date":"2026-10-07T15:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T15:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/794964\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T15:56:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T15:56:10","slug":"ex-england-cricketer-ashley-giles-on-obesity-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/794964\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-England cricketer Ashley Giles on obesity battle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former England cricketer Ashley Giles has revealed his weight ballooned to about 20 stone (127kg) after he retired.<\/p>\n

Giles, 53, played 54 Tests and 62 one-day internationals for England between 1997 and 2006, the highlight being his key role in 2005 when England reclaimed the Ashes from Australia for the first time in 18 years.<\/p>\n

Since retiring, Giles has held several roles within the game, both as a coach and administrator. He is currently chief executive of Worcestershire County Cricket Club.<\/p>\n

In 2025, Giles told BBC Test Match Special<\/a> about his struggles with performance anxiety and depression as a player.<\/p>\n

Now, in an exclusive broadcast interview with the BBC, external<\/a>, he has opened up on his obesity and the stigma attached to it. <\/p>\n

“If I look at my journey, my story, after retiring I have sort of been on a rollercoaster with my weight – and I would say for a majority of that time I have been obese,” said Giles.<\/p>\n

“At times I have struggled – some of that is shame, blame. At the maximum I was 127\/128 kilos, so that’s heavy. <\/p>\n

“I think it’s something which creeps up on you over time and it’s something which to a degree you normalise – buying bigger clothes, trying a bigger wardrobe and trying to hide the way you look. <\/p>\n

“The moment you lay off the extreme of diet and exercise the weight starts piling back on, and with it the fall in confidence.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former England cricketer Ashley Giles has revealed his weight ballooned to about 20 stone (127kg) after he retired.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":794965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-794964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}