A FATHER-OF-THREE shed five stone after doctors told him he had a life-threatening illness.

Company director Brian Davies, 43, could not run a mile when he was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes and weighed a dangerous 17 stone.

He decided to turn his life around and immediately joined a gym, and converted his junk food diet to a banana for breakfast, a bowl of fruit and fibre for lunch and ate a simple 1,000 calorie meal for dinner.

"I was adamant that I didn’t want to take drugs such as statins due to their side effects and how it may change my life," said Mr Davies, from Full Sutton, near York.

"Instead, I told the doctors to give me three months to become active and reduce my newfound health risks.

"I was focused on changing my ways and knew that I had to do something drastic if I was going to see results.

"I approached my weight loss by removing all distractions that could halt my progress and became completely focused on my goals."

Mr Davies joined PureGym York and began to concentrate on cardiovascular and calorie burning workouts every other day.

He added: "I started going to the gym during lunch at work and aimed to burn 500 calories every other day. I actually had a treadmill and some gym equipment at home but PureGym was really affordable and didn’t have any distractions."

Such is Mr Davies' progress, he now regularly cycles to work, can run five kilometres in under half an hour, and is aiming to cycle 15 kilometre, scale Mount Snowdon and cap it all off with a seven kilometre kayak in the next 12 months.

His weight loss eventually saw him go from 17 stone to 12 stone and drop from a size 42inch waist to a size 34.

Although he is ecstatic with the results, the transformation has presented some difficulties.

"I travel a lot for work and it’s a nightmare," he said. "I get stopped at passport control every time without fail as no one believes I’m the same person as in my photo. I also had to buy a whole new wardrobe after donating all of my suits to charity."