I’m almost half the man I used to be!

8:53am Thursday 1st May 2008

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A BASINGSTOKE DJ who has shed 17 stone - more than 100kg - in just seven months is feeling better than ever and is back playing the sport that he loves.

Forty-two-year-old Leroy Wilson, of Meadow Woods, Hatch Warren, had a body mass index (BMI) of 59, high blood pressure and was buying size XXXXXXXL shirts, when he joined a scheme to help him shed the pounds.

Before, I was struggling in my car. Now I’m jumping around and feel like a new person - my friends don't even recognise me

Leroy Wilson

He said: "Being nearly 35 stone wasn't a good look and I couldn't fit into clothes. I became pretty depressed about the size I was."

Leroy decided enough was enough and joined a programme called LighterLife. After his doctor gave him the go-ahead, he started an extreme 500-calories-per-day diet involving four meal replacement packets - of soups, milkshakes or a bar - and a minimum of four litres of water per day.

With the help of group counselling and five days a week at the gym - which he built up from half-an-hour to more than two-hour sessions - Leroy has literally dropped down to just over 18 stone, almost his teenage weight.

He said: "I have got to put my health first, even if it means cutting back on work, because you can't take anything with you when you're dead."

Charlotte Evans-Brown, Leroy's LighterLife counsellor, based in Farnham, said that people on the programme live off their own energy stores and are in a ketotic state that suppresses hunger.

She explained: "The programme takes the physical hunger for food away, but if you don't change the way you think and behave in the new body, the weight won't stay off."

She added that the scheme is only for people with a BMI of more than 29, making them clinically obese, and they are carefully monitored by a doctor.

Speaking about Leroy, Mrs Evans-Brown said: "In my three years of experience, his is the highest weight loss I have seen. It's remarkable".

In the early 1990s, the 6ft 3ins DJ, who works at clubs and venues throughout Hampshire, played a few games with the Basingstoke Beavers - now Bison - ice hockey team and loves the sport.

In April, he started playing ice hockey again for the first time in 12 years with Basingstoke's recreational team, the Cougars.

"A lot of people said I skated better this time than before," said Leroy.

He has now put his name down to skate in a 20-year anniversary reunion match in the autumn and said: "I'm really looking forward to it and I'll skate as much as I can before that."

The determined father-of-one has just started a 12-week course to slowly reintroduce him to a normal diet, gradually replacing meal packs with protein, such as a portion of fish or chicken.

With the help of his weekly counselling sessions, Leroy has learned about food, eating habits and the triggers that make him want to eat more, like cheese, bread, eating late at night and not wanting to upset someone by not finishing his plate.

The now much lighter Leroy said he is touched by the number of people he has inspired to lose weight, including his 20-year-old daughter Bernadette.

He added: "Before, I was struggling in my car. Now I'm jumping around and feel like a new person - a lot of my friends don't even recognise me."