The founder of th^n, David Shipley, was a fat kid!

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Naturally, he was aware of it, since the other kids in school could hardly let him forget it. However, being a positive person, it didn't worry David very much.

After all, nobody bothered very much if he didn't take part in cross-country runs on wet days in the middle of winter, and an extra layer of padding really helped when he fell over playing soccer - he was always the goalkeeper, as a larger surface area helped when stopping the ball and he couldn't run anyway.

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Actually, David started out as quite a sickly child. He was forever suffering with tonsillitis, which often led to ear infections, made him thoroughly miserable and meant he had a poor appetite. When David was about eight years old, he had measles, mumps and rubella in quick succession. When he recovered, David was scheduled for a tonsillectomy and after that was like a new person. He suddenly found his appetite and his mum, who loved to cook, thought all her Christmases had come at once.

Unfortunately, mum got a bit carried away and over fed David, such was her relief at his new found desire to eat. He rapidly gained weight, eating became a habit and before long he was first overweight and then obese. David gained a stone a year until by the time he was 17, he was 240 lb.

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At about that time, David got the urge to start dating. He had had very little interest in girls until then, mostly because he realised they would not give him a second glance other than to make fun of him, so he decided to do something about his weight, without having the first clue about nutrition. This was 1979, there was no internet, very little accessible information in books and no one who was much help in the way of specialist advice.

Several years previous to this and once she had realised she was out of her depth in terms of how to help David lose weight, mum had taken David to see their GP. He had told her to restrict David to 1000 calories a day, had not said much more, but had given her a table of foods and their respective calorific values. Despite them not finding the table much help at the time, David had kept it and he dug it out to study it a bit more.

David noticed that starchy foods were high in calories, so he decided to try eating just meat, fish, fruit and green vegetables. He explained his plan to his mum and she promised to make meals for him that kept within these limits. David was at college by this time, so he used to take a bag of Granny Smith apples with him each day and whenever he became hungry, (which was often at first), he ate one.

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Not much happened for a while, but then David noticed his 48 inch waisted trousers getting a bit looser and then after another little while, he had to buy a smaller pair. In nine months, David lost 9 stones, or 126 lb. and he finally felt human.

We all know now that rapid weight loss is not advised, mainly because it can so easily all pile back on again, but David was so determined to stay slim, that he continued to read and learn about nutrition, fine tuning his diet over time. He was now able to do more exercise and took up cycling, which he found meant that he burned more energy and was able to eat a little more without gaining weight. He also found that eating foods that were rich in protein, he seemed to build muscle.

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Over the past 40 years or so, David has maintained a weight of roughly 176 lb or 12 stones 7 lb, barring a few periods of high stress when he comfort ate and gained weight. Through his experience however, he'has always managed to adjust his intake or take more exercise and get things back on track.

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Now, David wants to share his vast experience through The Healthy Eating.Network.