Super-slimmer in prize running

FOR one man, keeping slim after a diet has not just been a matter of healthy living-it could now net him a prize in a national competition.Mike Scott, 35, originally shot to national fame on the back of a weight loss that saw him shed 12 stone in five months with the Cambridge diet.

FOR one man, keeping slim after a diet has not just been a matter of healthy living-it could now net him a prize in a national competition.

Mike Scott, 35, originally shot to national fame on the back of a weight loss that saw him shed 12 stone in five months with the Cambridge diet.

Four years later, and he is competing against 10 other successful slimmers for the chance to win an exotic holiday and a photo shoot.

When the Bradwell life coach and IT director originally shed the pounds, his transformation was so dramatic that he dropped from a size 52 to a size 34 waist, went down two shoe sizes and even lost two inches in height.

And now he will be attending the Maintainer of The Year awards ceremony in Birmingham tomorrow to find out if the public have voted him a winner.

Mike, whose weekly e-mail newsletter about losing weight is read by 20,000 people, said:

“Because it's down to the general public I've been on Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, you name it, to try and get people voting. If you are in my phonebook or email address list you will have heard about it basically.

“When I was originally in the newspapers, there were some doctors who said that the chance of me being to keep the weight off was less than one in a thousand.

“I took that as something of a challenge and now I think I'm in with a good shot at winning.

After losing the weight, Mike joined the team of Cambridge Diet councillors to help others follow his example and in January of this year he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.

“The important thing is to try and maintain a healthy lifestyle. I stopped dieting four years ago and now I don't sit on the sofa eating or thinking about food like I used to- I'm too busy for that these days. The important thing is to be positive about yourself and losing weight.”

Mike's former diet councillor Linda Jarman called two weeks ago to say she had nominated him for the award, and he has now set up a website -www.voteformike.co.uk- to encourage people to support him before the deadline on Wednesday.

Mother of two Joanne, 35, is proud of her husband. It was after watching his efforts to slim that she was motivated to lose weight herself. She, too, has kept from lapsing back into old ways.

“I think it's great. He deserves the credit he is getting for what he has done and he has helped so many people with experience he has and I think it's important to recognise that.

“I'm really proud of him and to be honest he has been a bit of an inspiration- not that I would tell him that. It's been great for our kids Ethan and Emily too, because he now has more energy to play with them.”

The ceremony will last all day, with the stories of each contestant told until the award is presented at 4pm, to be followed by a gala dinner. The location of holiday will be revealed on the day.