Man loses seven stone in weight loss journey after breaking a chair on Christmas Day

A 21-stone dad realised he needed to lose weight when he sat down for Christmas dinner - and broke the chair.

Max Eden, 30, piled on the pounds during lockdown. He was eating up to 4,000 calories a day and was shopping for XXXL clothes.

But after the embarrassment at Christmas in 2022 he decided to make a change. Max shed seven stone and five clothes sizes by restricting himself to 1,800 calories a day and swapping crisps and chocolate for healthy food.

The dad-of-two, from Winslow, said: "It was Christmas Day 2022 and I was sat at the table when the chair suddenly collapsed. It was like a lightbulb moment where I realised I needed to do something. I was worried it was going to affect my health.

"From a mental health point of view, you change the way you think of yourself when you gain weight, and I lost confidence in my work and personal life. As soon as it happened, I decided that was it, from Boxing Day I decided no more really fatty foods and I was going to move my body more.

"Now I feel really good and healthy, I’ve lost over seven stone which makes you feel revigorated for life, it sounds cheesy but it does, it’s addictive. It’s definitely given me more confidence, I feel happier in myself and like I can do more.

"Before I couldn’t play at the park with the kids and run around with them without getting tired but now I feel like I can do those things."

The event manager says that restricted exercise and a general change to his habits, as well as becoming a dad-to-be with Stephanie Eden, 28, led to him gaining weight. At his heaviest Max was 21 stone and wearing size XXL to XXXL, and living on a diet of high calorie takeaways, sugary snacks, and crisps.

He says most of his calories came from late night snacking after dinner - eating whole sharing bags of Kettle crisps, or king size bars of chocolate. Max started by replacing unhealthy snacks with raisins and grapes and started running - working his way up to 10km jogs.

He added fruit like watermelon or orange to his breakfasts, and replaced chippy lunches with falafel wraps or Mediterranean salads, and says as other people started to notice and comment on his progress, it spurred him on to continue.

"The chair breaking on Christmas Day was the moment for me, he said. "I’d known I’d got bigger, and something in that moment meant I realised I needed to do something about it.

"I wasn’t doing extreme dieting but just watching what I ate and looking after myself, I started going to the gym again and being a bit embarrassed. Food wise, snacking was a really big thing I was doing, I was eating one big Kettle chip bag a night and two bars of chocolate a day."