Can you smell what Thailand's 'Rock' is cooking?

You wouldn’t know it from looking at him now, but Puri “Rock” Hassadin lived more than three decades of his life trapped inside an obese body.

Today, he is on a mission to show Thais that they too can adopt a lifestyle change towards better health -- starting in their own kitchen.  

The chef-cum-fitness trainer is set to launch his new television show, “Kitchen on the Rock,” at the end of June on Channel 9. The 30-minute weekly show aims to teach viewers how to make quick dishes that anyone, regardless of their cooking skill or budget, can easily execute at home. 

The show, says Rock, will feature healthy dishes that cost very little to make. Recipes call for a short list of easy-to-find ingredients, require only basic kitchen equipment, take no more than 15 minutes to cook and are designed to deliver the biggest bang for their buck in terms of flavor and nutrition. 

In other words, this program promises not to be another cooking show in which the host sets out 20 or 30 little bowls of high-brow ingredients while chirpily inviting the viewers to recreate that dish at home in their European-style kitchen.  

More on CNNGo: 5 basic Thai ingredients that can be used to make hundreds of dishes

The reality of most Thai city-dwellers is hardly conducive to that type of cooking.

When folks leave their home in the suburbs before dawn to work in the city, chances are they don’t come home late in the evening to cook a healthy meal from scratch. Oily fried noodles in Styrofoam boxes are more like it.  

Rock understands that reality. 

“To effect change, you need to convince people that it’s doable and sustainable,” he says. 

Practicality, therefore, represents one of the hallmarks of the show. In fact, a segment of the program will show people how to use widely-available ingredients –- even those from a supermarket salad bar –- to augment and supplement the street-bought food and make it more healthy.  

But he insists that he is not trying to preach.  

I've been called every fat name in the book

Behind the tattooed, pierced, muscular motorcyclist image is a man in his mid-30s with a mild-mannered and laid-back disposition whose life isn’t any different from the average Bangkokian's.   

 “I strive to come across as a friend who wants to help,” says Rock. “After all, I’m just someone who has been there, done that, and lived to tell the tale.”  

Only a few years ago, Rock was an overweight restaurant and hotel cook who lived, as he puts it, a miserable life. Weighing in at a whopping 120 kilograms, even his height of 182 centimeters, which is considered above average for Thais, was not enough to keep him from being classified as clinically obese.

With a strong family history of heart disease and high blood pressure, Rock wasn’t looking at a very bright future –- or a very long one, for that matter.  

Health issues aside, there were also all sorts of limitations associated with being overweight. The physical activities he now enjoys, like boxing and motorcycling, were difficult for someone who carried around the equivalent of about eight average-size granite mortars in excess weight. 

But that was nothing compared to the emotional trauma. Overweight since childhood, Rock was used to the name-calling. “Oh, ‘piggy,’ ‘fatty,’ ‘giant,’”  he recalls. “I’ve been called every fat name in the book.” 

Asking girls out had a zero per cent success rate. Even attempts to dress fashionably backfired. His best friends took one look at Rock at his heaviest weight in a pair of tight-fitting jeans and begged him not to do it again.

And then there was an embarrassing incident when he was laughed out of a tattoo parlor after the artist declared the chef’s flabby flesh a total waste of ink.  

All that changed when a fitness trainer friend took Rock under his wings and taught him how to eat right and exercise effectively. Soon the weight disappeared for good -- something the crash diets and weight loss pills of his younger years could not produce.  

Now trim and buff with less than 10 percent body fat, Rock is living the life he wishes he could have lived in his teen and twenties.  

Yet, he knows that maintaining good health is a lifelong journey. 

“I get lazy too and I don’t always want to exercise or watch what I eat,” he says. “But sometimes when I close my eyes to sleep, I can still see the chubby kid I once was and I can still hear the other kids taunting me.” 

And that’s enough to get him out of bed for a morning run.  

“Kitchen on the Rock” is scheduled to air on Channel 9 at 4:00 p.m. every Sunday, from the end of June.