Mahanga Maru
One of six children who was born in breed in the small rural town of Ruatoria on the East Coast. 

Wiremu Bayliss
I'm a normal every day guy who has had struggles with weight for a long time, but through hard work  focus, dedication and aroha from my whanau I have shed a lot of this weight. I have been keeping a personal blog and have posted regular updates to capture and record my journey so far. I discuss matters that relate to me, my weight and also some other interesting topics.

Visit Wiremu's blog to read more about his incredible weight loss Journey.

Whetu Te Paki
Tena koutou katoa,
I am writing to share my never ending journey to a healthier lifestyle and how this will succeed through to my family and my ambition to participate in IronMaori 2011.
For the majority of my life I have lived life large. I have a large family, large dreams, achieved large and as are many maori male, I also have a large body size. I have struggled with my size for the majority of my life.

Harley Thompson
My name is Harley Thompson and this is my ongoing weight loss journey from the seriously obese to a healthy positive role model for my family. At the end of my high school years, I left as a solid 100kg bullet proof Māori boy ready to take on the world!  However over the next 22 years I transformed into a 40 year old 232 kg negative Maori health statistic and like so many others I have tried numerous diets, health programs and weight loss regimes even to the extent of considering surgery as a last resort to reclaim that bullet proof image.

Harley's healthy transformation
Well whanau what a month it has been. There have been highs and lows and right now I’m more determined than ever to get my training schedule back on track.

I completed the long course duathlon in Wellington comprising of a 10km run – 40km ride and a 5 km run and to be fair there was very little running done in the last section. I am thankful my wife Carolyn walked the last 5 km with me because I was definitely sucking the kumara. I learnt lots like you need to drink often. I found the experience to be very useful and it gave me a gauge of where I am at.” Lots more work to do man – everyday”as my mate Karaka is saying.

Tamati Davis
I'd been in the hospital, and the doctor had told me straight to my face that if I didn't do anything about my weight I was going to be lucky to live three months. They told me straight I could die. And then I thought, "Jesus that's one shock"! And the next shock was when they told me that I was a diabetic and I had poor circulation in one leg. 

Ray Bishop
I have a very simple analogy - that we are all born with simple things. So we are all born with a mind; we’re born with a body; we’re born with a certain length of life. And then we have I guess a form of spiritual guidance that either says that something’s good for us or something’s bad for us.

Robert Hita
As a smoker, yes smokes came first for me, I smoked in my house, I smoked everywhere: I smoked in the car, I smoked in front of my kōtiro. And then I think she would have been about 6 or 7, and we were sitting in the sitting room one day and I was watching TV, and she came in with one of these lolly cigarettes, and she sat straight opposite me and she started puffing on this thing with her legs folded like how I do when I'm relaxing having a cigarette. And that really, really bothered me to see that, because I didn't want her to pick up the smoking habit and so from there I gave myself four weeks, four weeks to quit.

Witi Ashby
Yes I am. At the moment I have these conditions: high blood pressure/hypertension, high cholesterol, severe chronic asthma and diabetes and I take Loratadine, Amlodipine, Aspirin, Simvastin, Inhibace, Doxazosin, Metformin, Potassium, Ventolin and Symbicort to treat them.

Ra Mason
He didn’t want to ever go to the doctor. He never went to the doctor. And, my brother said to him… My brother’s got sons and he said to my dad, he was talking about your rights to grow up being a Māori tāne. Being a father to your kids. Teaching the kids of now-a-days. How are they supposed to know to go to the doctor and to get your health sorted? How are they supposed to know to not smoke? To not booze. And to not do this if the role models in their life are the ones that are showing them that’s what you do when you’re a Māori tāne.

Tony Ukurangi
I think the main difference that being on this programme (Healthy Communities), will make to me and my family is that I will be around a lot longer and definitely be around to see my boy have his 21st yeah. That’s really important to me.

Wayne Poutou
My wife and I and our kids we went to the Arena in Porirua, Te Rauparaha Arena and we went to watch netball, we went to watch The Pulse. It was a great game, we went home and we watched the delayed coverage and as we were watching the delayed coverage on TV, we saw in the background, we were trying to spot ourselves, and it wasn’t hard to find me. As we looked along the horizon of the crowd, it was like this and again this big lump.
I thought to myself we need to do something to change this and it wasn’t till I guess about a few weeks later it really started to hit home.

Conway Mathews
Several years back, my friend and I won the Wellingtonians of the Year Award for working with students and we have kind of gone through our lives being these big guys and working with these kids and because of that, the role model persona that we have, we thought, why not instead of just working with the kids showing the kids how to get in shape, how to stay in shape and be healthy and stuff like that, we would be keen to do it ourselves and if we can start looking like God Adonises, beautiful Maori men that we are, then all the better.

Featuring:
Tony Ukurangi
Wayne Poutou
Conway Mathews
Willie Taurima
Kupa Kupa