My weight is really important.
I think it's probably the most important thing in my life.
I decided that I would Google how to get skinny fast.
I decided, "You know what, I'm going to buy these pills."
I'm not scared to die.
My goal is way more important than the health risks.
When you're desperate, nothing, other than,
"I need to lose weight," is the motto.
I know you may not fear death, but what you should fear
is the effect that it may have on people around you.
I don't know what to say...
I tried a lot of diets in the past.
I've tried green tea diets, juice diets, capsules.
I've tried everything.
My last diet was the apple cider vinegar diet.
You are literally replacing actual food with this liquid.
I've had a lot of negative side-effects,
I would get really sore heads.
I would feel really light-headed, especially on juice diets.
If it meant I was going to lose a couple of pounds,
I would 100 million percent, do it.
In this picture, this was the skinniest I've ever been.
I think my goal is to be a lot skinnier than that.
I think I'd like to lose maybe another 2st.
My weight has changed dramatically.
I've been every size from an 18, all the way down to a ten.
I feel like I do it because
everybody else is doing it, sometimes.
One morning, I woke up and I decided, "Do you know what, I'm going
"to buy these pills online."
In general, I just didn't really care.
I looked into diet pills, I'm willing to take the risks,
and I would happily do it.
If someone told me there's risks and what could happen if I,
you know, keep taking these diet pills...
..you know, anything can happen to anybody, so Yolo.
I'm not scared to die and that's why it makes it much easier
to do these diets.
My goal is way more important than the health risks.
I want to be, you know, really skinny.
Until I get to that stage where I want to look at myself
and be like, "wow!", then I'm just going to keep going.
Hello, there. I'm Tom. How are you? Ronan. Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.
So I've heard what you said about your ways of weight loss,
and it was quite interesting.
But I'd like to tell you my story of my little sister.
She was much like you in the way that she wanted to look her best.
She had tried all sorts of, sort of, dieting methods.
She joined a social media group and they suggested dieting pills.
At the time, we just thought they were herbal diet pills.
But she started to feel quite poorly.
Went off to hospital and said, "I'll see you later."
Five hours later, I'm getting a call to say
I need to come to the hospital.
By the time I'd got there, she'd died.
That's really, really sad.
I can't believe you've just told me that.
I'm sorry to hear that. That is horrible.
And at no point, did she think that these so-called pills
would be the cause of her death.
What was in the pills, we later found out,
was a substance called DNP.
Erm, which is wrongfully sold as a diet pill,
and what it actually is, is a...
..it's a classified explosive.
Really? Yeah.
I'm sorry to hear about that.
You can never quite imagine what it's going to be like
without somebody, until they're actually gone.
And to start off with, it's unimaginable.
You can't comprehend that thought that you will never see them again.
Erm...
..so it's quite hard to watch, it really is.
It's OK, don't worry.
And, er...
Take your time.
It's just a horrible way to go, to know that she was that desperate
to lose weight, even though she was perfectly fine, beautiful girl.
I remember you said that you would take 0.5 seconds...?
Yeah, I wouldn't think twice.
I wouldn't think twice to even things like making myself sick.
That just became normal.
How you were saying you don't necessarily care of the risks
to yourself? Yeah.
Have you ever thought of the potential risks,
emotionally, it might cause... For others...?
People around you, if anything was to happen to you?
My mum would be broken if something happened to me,
especially like, you know, on these diets.
I think my mum would be very, very lonely and sad.
You know, everybody likes to, kind of, look their best,
but there's definitely safer ways of doing it.
Like you said, the gym... It's not that important any more.
You know, from what you say...
Nothing is worth leaving your loved ones behind. No.
Even if you think you are going to lose a couple of pounds.
You know, you're fine as you are.
Thank you, I'm going to stop trying to compare myself...
..to everyone in life, every day. Everybody's different.
Everybody's completely different, it's fine.
So you can never be the same as anybody else.
Thanks for telling me your story.
I feel like I should really learn more about these things I'm taking.
Talking to you, I feel like I don't really want to take them now,
to be honest.
I feel like I want to go back home, talk to my mum and just
read up about it and just think really hard about what I want to do.
I just hope that, you know, you might think a little bit more about
the risks instead of just jumping in. Yeah.
Tom, thank you so much for opening up and sharing your story.
I'm so sorry. OK.