MY PICTURES...

These pictures tell their own story as to how my weight has gone up and down over my five decades. 
Originally quite an average sized kid, I was tall and fairly athletic during my late teens and early twenties but really started piling on the pounds after moving to Bristol in 1999. Well, there's just too many pie shops up here, isn't there? That said, the last twenty years have seen me put on seven stone, lose six stone then put on eight stone quite easily, a real yo-yo effort.
So feast (food again!!) your eyes on these pics and you'll see someone who has let themselves go spectacularly in recent years but needs to do something about it. And fast!

This picture is the earliest one of me in existence. For those of you that don't know me, (a) this is definitely me and (b) I'm the one on the left hand side. I reckon I was probably about two years old at the time, so around 1970. 

At the age of 11/12, so around 1980,it was suggested that I needed to toughen myself up so I was enrolled into a judo class. It didn't work... I left there several months later having reached the level of white belt with a white stripe!

Gosh, how thin do I look? This is 1987 and my first foreign holiday abroad with my girlfriend to the Spanish town of Nerja. I don't weigh much at all here, and not just because half my head is missing either. I was buff!

No need for any comments about the shorts! This was 1988 after all and small shorts were the trend. This is me a few days after finishing the London Marathon in a creditable time, and as fit as I've ever been. 

This is where it started to go wrong a little. This petrol station was the least busy in the area, giving me much time to scoff food and do little exercise. I'm podgy here, and stood next to famous actor Julian Sands in 1995. 

Don't judge me, double denim was all the rage back in 1998 when this was taken. Was on a whistle stop tour of the 92 Premier & League clubs and called into the set where I was mistaken for Jimmy Corkhill. Eh, calm down!

By the time 1999 came, I'd lost a bit more weight and looked smarter. This is one of my favourite pics, taken as I performed best man duties for my best friend at his Devon wedding. Moved to Bristol six months later. 

By 2004, the rot had well and truly set in. Although to be honest, uploading a pic of me with a 6'8" good looking pro footballer isn't the best idea, is it? By now, the pounds were going on all too easily. 

A legend of British football; a talented, exciting attacker stood next to Paul Merson, boom boom! Was a very big unit by now and this pic does me no favours, taken as it was around 2010/11 time.

If taking a pic with one fit pro footballer was silly, then having a pic with two is madness. This is 2013, I'm 45 years old and these are Yeovil's Arron Davies and Chris Cohen who came down to help launch my book. Still podgy.

This picture half hides the problem area, ie my stomach but there's no denying that when this was taken in 2015, I was getting far too big. Nice pic of my best mate Simon and I at Exeter City FC.

And we end as we began, with me feeling the need to point out I'm the one on the left hand side again. This was taken in June 2019 at the Cricket World Cup - guess who was playing that day!