ALAN Bradley's journey through descending shirt sizes is

fairly amazing in itself.

At his heaviest, the miner's son and former car mechanic

from Eastwood weighed 33½ stone.

He couldn't bend down to tie his shoelaces. He couldn't

climb the stairs without becoming out of breath. He even became

immune to the cold weather because he was wrapped in what he

calls his "comfort blanket" – layers of fat that shielded him.

If the sun shone, he broke out in a sweat.

From childhood, Alan had grown accustomed to avoiding

looking at himself in the mirror and standing on the

scales.

"If I couldn't see myself, I wasn't conscious of myself," he

says.

While his dad was down the mines, his mu1m worked full-time

as a machinist. The family wouldn't have time to sit down and

eat together. Instead Alan's diet was "junk, junk, junk". He

would snack on crisps and biscuits all day. His weight

ballooned and he was bullied because of it. By the time he was

16, he weighed 17 stone and was clinically obese.

Concerned doctors at the QMC suggested Alan should have his

teeth wired together for two years. His mum liquidised all his

food and he managed to lose nine stone. But, as soon as the

wires came off, the weight went back on.

He left school to serve a YTS apprenticeship as a

mechanic.

A typical shift at the garage would see him consume six or

seven bags of crisps a day, plus bars of chocolate. "I wouldn't

just eat one bar; I'd eat four or five," he admits. "I wouldn't

eat just a couple of biscuits; I'd eat the packet." For

breakfast, he'd eat four or five pieces of toast. On the bus

home, he'd stop off and grab a family-sized trifle to devour.

In the evening, he'd eat up to four ready meals. In addition,

he was drinking up to four litres of cola a day.

"I'd still be eating at midnight," he says. "I never felt

full."

He also smoked up to 40 cigarettes a day.

At the age of 27, he moved out of home.

A few years later, he met Donna, the woman who is now his

wife.

"She never said a word about my weight," he says, with

affection. "She always thought of me as a gentle giant."

The couple had three children: Kimberley, now 14, Joshua, 12

and Jaykay, eight. However, without admitting it to himself,

Alan was uncomfortable with aspects of his life. He was forced

to shop at specialist clothes retailers and felt conspicuous

when he left the house.

Matters came to a head when Donna tried to book a family

holiday in Majorca – their first trip abroad – and Alan was

told he would have to pay double for a seat.

"It was humiliating," he says. "I didn't want to go any

more, so I told them to go by themselves."

When the family returned, he recalls looking at the pictures

of them enjoying themselves in the sunshine and he says

"something clicked".

When Donna set off to do the weekly shop, he asked her to

skip the usual staples of chocolate and crisps in favour of

fruit and veg.

"I'd never eaten fruit before," he says. "I didn't have a

clue what I'd like."

He also started scanning the pages of Donna's women's

magazines to get a better idea of the kind of lifestyle he

should be leading.

Amazingly, in the space of a few weeks, he had quit smoking

and begun a new regime of exercise and healthy eating.

He bought an exercise bike and began cycling in front of the

TV, building up from ten minutes to half an hour. Nowadays, he

does an hour of exercise every other day, including taking the

family dog on four-mile walks, biking to the shops and

weightlifting.

He has cut out the snacking and instead sticks to three

meals a day, including a breakfast of porridge with

semi-skimmed milk, lunch of an unbuttered brown ham or turkey

salad cob with an apple and dinner of vegetables with a tuna

steak.

He has swapped the cola for water and fresh orange

juice.

Incredibly, in two years, he has dropped 20 stone to 12

stone 10.

Luckily, he has escaped the twin banes of many overweight

people's lives: diabetes and high blood pressure.

He has burned most of his old clothes, apart from a few

choice reminders of his old self. There is a jumper, he says,

which is as wide as a door.

Last year, for the first time he was able to go abroad when

he and Donna enjoyed a three-day break in Benidorm. "It was one

of the best holidays I've ever had," he says.

However, Alan still felt unhappy with his looks.

"With clothes on, I looked all right," he says. "But beneath

my shirt, I had so much excess skin and it looked really

saggy."

After trying and failing to get an operation to smooth the

excess skin on the NHS, he approached the Harley Medical Group,

which has a clinic in Nottingham.

He was told the twin operations of a gynaccomastia (known as

moobs or man-boobs reduction) and an abdominoplasty, or tummy

tuck, would cost £10,000.

Knowing how much it meant to him, his family raised the cash

for him to go down to London and have the operations.

The three-hour gynaccosmastia took place ten weeks ago. The

abdominoplasty will take place in September, a week after Alan

and Donna renew their wedding vows.

"We were married at Basford register office ten years ago

but I don't like the pictures because I'm so big," he says.

This time, they will say their vows at Greasley Parish

Church, before jetting off to Alicante. Alan has already picked

out a selection of T-shirts and shorts to show off his new,

trim figure.

He still struggles to take in his new look – even if he does

permit himself the occasional glance in the mirror

nowadays.

"I look at pictures of my old self and I think, 'That can't

be me,'" he says. "But I love my life now; I finally feel

normal. One day, I suppose, the penny will drop."