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Retail clerk shed nine stone by following simple eating plan

A teenager warned he would suffer a heart attack by the age of 25 due to a daily diet of pizza shed a massive 58kg (9 stone) after cutting down to just one healthy meal a day.

Michael Murray Jr, a charity shop worker, went from tipping the scales at 136kg (21 stone) to a trim 77kg (12 stone) by eating just dinner and walking three miles a day.

Michael, from Middletown, Ohio, in the United States, said: "The doctor told me I was 21(stone) and that because I was extremely obese I was likely to have cardiac trouble and a heart attack by the time I was 25.

"That wasn't the news I wanted to hear but it gave me the motivation I needed to change. I didn't want to live obese and I didn't want to have health problems."

Michael was just 14 when the doctors gave him the grim warning in 2014. He had struggled with his weight all his life and emotional eating became a vicious cycle.

Mr Murray said: "I was introverted growing up and hated being overweight and so I ate.

"I was extremely antisocial in school so I was picked on for being a 'nerd' a few times, but I was not messed with too often."

"I would eat a lot of sweets and six pieces of pizza each day"

He gorged himself on sweets, guzzled bottles of sugary drinks and ate six slices of pizza every single day.

Michael added: "I would eat a lot of sweets and six pieces of pizza each day. I would always eat to the point where I felt gorged."

An unhappy home life contributed to Michael's problems with food. His mother, Dawn Burke, 41, suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and tragically committed suicide in 2015.

The tragedy made Michael even more determined to lose weight and get healthy.

He said: "My mother's suicide was a breaking point for me. Overeating led to a broken home and depression. I was tired of being overweight. I realised I needed to change my life."

The devout Christian prayed to lose weight and insisted that he noticed his appetite decrease.

He steered clear of his beloved candy, pizza, dairy and potatoes and began drinking a lot of water as well as tucking into protein-rich meat and salad. Michael found himself going from eating four meals-a-day, to two meals-a-day and finally he was satisfied with just one main evening meal.

"I was only getting hungry once a day"

He consumed just dinner, usually a plate of grilled chicken, rice, steamed broccoli and green beans. While it is hardly standard diet advice, he insisted that he just wasn't hungry enough for more than one meal a day.

He said: "I was only getting hungry once a day. Physically the human body can get through a day on one meal."

Michael reached his target weight of 77kg (12 stone) in 2017.

He has swapped his size 42 pants for a size 34 and while he used to wear a shirt size 3X, he is now a medium. He added that he now usually has two meals a day - breakfast and dinner.

Michael said: "I will usually have a breakfast burrito and I do drink a lot of water. It gave me a sense of achievement. My mom would be proud of me.

"She definitely would have been happy that I made a choice to better myself."

He is now looking forward to a healthy future - after graduating from bible college at the Refuge School of Ministry in Alabama and since then he's been working with kids who live in broken homes.