By Phil Coleman

Last updated at 09:09, Tuesday, 15 January 2013

Father of three Wayne Robinson really is the incredible shrinking man.

Title
Author
Copyright

Description

Just nine months ago, the 37-year-old from Currock, Carlisle, feared for the future after allowing his weight to balloon to a life-limiting 31 stones.

He was so worried that he even considered gastric band surgery in the hope that it would save his life.

It was the fear that he may never see his sons, aged 14, 11, and four, growing up that finally prompted him to make a fresh attempt to lose weight.

And the results – achieved through the LighterLife Weight Loss Management system – are astonishing.

Wayne has shed 18 stones – an average weight loss of half a stone every week for the past nine months. He now tops the scales at 13st 4lbs.

He says the achievement has transformed his life.

“I’d had no major health scare to speak of, although at the size I was I generally tended to avoid the embarrassment of visiting the doctors,” explained Wayne. “But I truly believe I was in denial for many years, because with a BMI of 59 [a measure of body fat compared to height], more than double what it should be, it wasn’t a case of if I fell ill, it was when.

“I was a ticking time bomb health wise, but still that wasn’t enough to make me lose weight. What really made me decide to do it were my boys and the thought of them growing up without a dad.

“I vividly remember reading somewhere that the life expectancy for someone with a BMI of 40 was 20 years less than someone with a healthy BMI around 25. That made me realise that I was living on borrowed time.

“I’d lost my mum in my mid 20s to bowel cancer and I just didn’t want that for my boys. I wanted to be around to see them grow up.”

Wayne turned to the LighterLife Weight Loss Management programme, attending counsellor Paula Carruthers’ classes in Carlisle.

He began in February 2012, weighing 30st 13lbs.

His programme involves replacing ordinary eating with four specially-formulated food packs per day, and weekly counselling sessions to encourage a permanent lifestyle change.

He said: “The change has been unbelievable and not just physically. Inside I am a completely different person.

“My life had come to the point where I was making a conscious effort to constantly avoid embarrassing situations, from having to ask for a seatbelt extender on planes to never attending parents’ evening at my sons’ school so they wouldn’t get bullied about my size.”

“If I am honest, it was more than just the everyday situations, I was even avoiding extremely serious appointments,” he said. For example, my Mum died of bowel cancer at the age of 45, so when I reached 35 I was supposed to go for a routine screening to make sure it could be caught early if I was unlucky enough to have it as well. I’d received the letter from the hospital but I was so worried that the hospital wouldn’t be able to do it because of the size of me that I didn’t go.

“Even though I knew one of major reasons that mum died was because it wasn’t detected earlier, the embarrassment and fear kept me away. I never want to feel like that again.”

He said LighterLife taught him about issues behind of his weight gain.

Wayne said his weight had gradually crept up over the years, not helped by him having a desk job with Thomas Cook for 19 years.

In 2010, he took redundancy and now works as a national business development manager for Arnold Hearing Care.

“Over the last 10 months I have literally been the miraculously shrinking man,” he said. “My weight loss has far exceeded all my expectations.”

He can now run around with his sons William, 14, Harry, 11, and four year old Finley.

Wayne said the support of the people around him spurred him on, particularly his wife Samantha, 37,and his sister Stacey.

He added: “I believe it has saved my life.”

Wayne is now looking forward to a trip of a lifetime to Las Vegas.

First published at 09:04, Tuesday, 15 January 2013
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk