How Alan lost 20 stone

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."