{"id":94667,"date":"2025-08-26T19:42:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T19:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/94667\/"},"modified":"2025-08-26T19:42:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T19:42:10","slug":"bullied-boys-confidence-gone-up-after-weight-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/94667\/","title":{"rendered":"Bullied boy’s confidence ‘gone up’ after weight loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charlotte Benton<\/p>\n

BBC News, West Midlands<\/p>\n

Listen: Ten-year-old boy’s fitness journey goes viral<\/p>\n

A 10-year-old boy, whose fitness journey has attracted millions of followers on social media, says his weight loss has given him the confidence to go to high school next year. <\/p>\n

Jacob, from Wellesbourne in Warwickshire, decided to take matters into his own hands after he was bullied by his classmates and referred to as “fat and tubby”.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t want to go to high school overweight because in high school it’s different; you can get more hurt, and I didn’t want that to happen,” he said.<\/p>\n

With the help of former amateur boxer brothers Harry and Joe Freeman from Boxwave Fitness in Stratford, Jacob has lost 22kg (3.5st) and says his confidence has “definitely gone up”. <\/p>\n

‘Bullying really hurt me’<\/p>\n

More than 50 million people have watched the trio’s training videos, and a fundraising page to buy healthy food and sports gear has raised nearly \u00a312,000. <\/p>\n

“Before I started Boxwave, my confidence was really bad,” Jacob said. <\/p>\n

“They [classmates] were calling me really mean words, and it really hurt me on the inside.<\/p>\n

“Whenever I went to the park with my grandad, there were always other kids there, but I didn’t want to ask them if I could play because I was afraid they were going to be mean to me, so my grandad had to ask for me.”<\/p>\n

Joe Freeman said Jacob’s fitness journey meant he was now able to play football at the park with children he had just met. <\/p>\n

“We’re very proud of him; he’s a star,” he added. <\/p>\n

“We pushed him as far as we can, but Jacob has done amazing, and it’s such a happy story.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The trio’s training videos have attracted tens of millions of views on social media <\/p>\n

The brothers added that they had been alarmed by obesity rates and hoped to encourage more young people to start exercising.<\/p>\n

“The sad part is there are thousands of Jacobs out there, and that’s where we want to reach out to these kids and inspire them,” Harry said. <\/p>\n

“If you can get into it at a young age, it just stays with you, and it’s so much easier,” he added.<\/p>\n

Jacob reassured other children who may be scared to go back to school, as they had been bullied. <\/p>\n

“I have been in their position… but my message would be try your very best to ignore them.”<\/p>\n

The primary school pupil added that his next challenge was to train to run a 10km (6.2m) race. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charlotte Benton BBC News, West Midlands Listen: Ten-year-old boy’s fitness journey goes viral A 10-year-old boy, whose fitness…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[6647,102,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-94667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-fitness","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94667","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=94667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}