Bit ashamed to say I started losing weight as I was due to meet an old friend and didn’t want them to see me as this fat guy. I shouldn’t be that ashamed as it’s fairly common I guess for school reunions and such things. I felt ashamed as I’m married and could have lost the weight for my wife’s benefit.

Anyway, trying to keep to 2000 calories a day is hard enough, but there was definitely no room in there for my 4 x 500ml (about 20oz) of beer a day so I cut down and the weight came off at an alarming rate, about 2lb a week for several months.

I still had the equivalent of 2 x 20oz cans of beer a day. This doesn’t sound a lot, but over a week it’s well over double the U.K. weekly recommended limit. It seemed so daft to work so hard in the gym and then drink 500 calories of beer. My big worry, though, was I always wanted more than 2 cans, and it would’ve been a matter of time before my intake crept back up - it’s the usual story of a heavy drinker trying to become a moderate one. The easiest way from then on, of course, was to quit.

Yes, a lot of things became possible with that 40lb+ weight loss. We shouldn’t judge others on looks, but I am certainly taken more seriously as a slim guy.