A bed salesman who ballooned to 22st 7lb after spending more than £200 a week on takeaways during the Covid lockdowns has shed a staggering 8st 5lb in a year after joining a fat-busting football league where losing weight counts as goals scored. Now a fighting fit 14st 2lb, Ashley Smith, 23, admits he has always been on the “larger side” but the pandemic saw his weight “spiral out of control,” as he scoffed down McDonald’s burgers and KFC fried chicken – sometimes ordering two take-outs a day.
When his weight was higher than his age, in April 2021, then aged 21, he saw the MAN v FAT football league advertised in his home town of Bicester, Oxfordshire, so joined and has since slimmed down from an XXXL to a snug L. Ashley, who is single, is now happy to socialise and pose for pictures, having shunned company when his weight ballooned, saying: “I was too embarrassed to go out in public.”
