A chef who gorged on 5,000 calories a day during the Covid lockdown and did no exercise has managed to shed 12 kilos to look like his hero Hollywood actor Chris Pratt.
Matthew Cantrill, from Leeds, West Yorkshire, would eat mounds of takeaways and junk food, drink beer and barely move while stuck at home.
It led to a serious negative spiral in his mental and physical health, reports Leeds Live.
The average night saw the 33-year-old sink up to eight cans of beer, as well as deep-fried chicken, pizza or Chinese takeaway.
He said his beer belly got so out of hand it would dig into his belt when he fastened his shoelaces.
During the second lockdown, Matthew realised he wasn’t happy with his weight and decided to do something about it.
Despite having no experience in a gym, he signed up to Ultimate Performance Personal Trainers Leeds after walking past one day.
He has since lost 12kg and achieved his goal of getting a body like the one Hollywood star Chris Pratt sported in Jurassic World.
Matthew said: “It was a depressing time for everyone. The second lockdown affected my mental health.
“I wasn’t enjoying my job, my weight wasn’t right. I ended up leaving my job and getting into fitness, things started to get better. It was hard at the time.
“I was struggling to commit to a run by myself then decided it was time to join a gym. Being a tight Yorkshireman I wanted to get my money’s worth.”
Prior to lockdown, Matthew would get up to 20,000 steps in a day, however, this plummeted to around 1,000 steps mainly from walking his dog.
After joining the gym and having a personal trainer, he was taught how to use the equipment properly and would do three one hour workouts each week, and he increased his steps to 5,000 a day.
After 50 sessions in 19 weeks, he dropped all the weight and said he “feels a million times better”.
His blood pressure has come down and he is now much more body confident and happy as a person, he added.
Matthew describes what a typical day was like for him before he started his fitness journey
"A day in the life of me, on a workday – say it's Monday; it's wake up, maybe I have some Pop-Tarts, so just sugary carbs, I'd have a coffee, probably three or four coffees in the morning.
"Breakfast, a couple of sausages, just on the fly with some hash browns. Again, just dirty food. That's if I had time to eat it.
"Lunchtime, again, we had a lot of naughty-type food, like deep-fried chicken and things like that, which would be on the menu. So deep-fried chicken, even if I had it as a salad. It's just loads of hot sauce, and I didn't realise the number of calories in hot sauce – just the worst ones with so much sugar in them.
"Get home, and then for tea, it might be a take-away pizza or Chinese. On average, I'd probably be having anywhere between four to eight cans of full-fat beer a night, not like Bud Light or Budweiser.
"Just every night; Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday were even bigger blowouts. I wouldn't even realise it because, throughout lockdown, it just became a norm to have constant drinks.
"When I came back into work, I was like, "Oh, it's Monday. Yeah, we always have a drink on a Monday".
So my mentality was, "Let's have a couple of beers". The next thing you know, I would have about 1,500 calories in beer a day, on top of all the dirty foods.
"I'd be well into the 4,000 or 5,000 calorie mark, and each day it was just increasing and increasing. It affected me mentally and physically."
