A SLIMMER has dropped 13 stone in weight - with help from a diet of mushy peas.
Nightclub boss Robert Matthews has gone from 31 stone to 18 stone in a year since swapping fatty foods for peas three times a day.
The dad-of-one, 42, combined his diet with surgery to fit a gastric band to shrink his stomach.
He said yesterday: "I had been through every diet that existed but nothing worked.
"I was eating huge takeaways all day, every day and I would eat up to 15 bags of crisps while I sat in the club.
"When I went out with friends I would order dozens of starters.
"It makes me cringe when I look back at it. But now I've swapped my huge appetite for mushy peas and it's worked a treat."
Robert used to eat in restaurants virtually every night and often pigged out on dozens of starters before a large main course and pudding.
All of his XXXL clothes had to be shipped from the US because he was unable to find his waist size in Britain.
He spent years eating six meals a day such as pies, kebabs and burgers, washed down with pints of Guinness.
But Robert decided to change his lifestyle after a holiday in Barbados last summer when he went diving in the sea - and needed three friends to haul him back on board the boat.
He said: "I would have a fry-up, then a bacon sandwich, a pasty, two Chinese takeaways, a kebab and then a burger on the way home. I was eating continuously through the day. I don't know how I survived.
"I couldn't live like this for the rest of my life. I was eating myself into an early grave."
Robert, from Penzance, Cornwall, paid £14,000 for a gastric band to be fitted to make his stomach the size of an egg cup.
He had 75 per cent of his intestine removed and was ordered to eat three small meals a day because his stomach is unable to digest anything bigger.
Robert said: "The operation was dangerous but I got through it and it's givenme a new lease of life.
"I dropped a stone in the first week and since then the weight just dropped off. I can eat only three little meals so I've been feasting on mushy peas.
"The weight has just dropped off. Now I walk and cycle everywhere. It feels great to be a normal size again."
MUSH BETTER
AN average 200g bowl of mushy peas has just 172 calories and 1g of fat.
MEN would need to eat 14 and a half bowls of mushy peas per day to get their recommended daily allowance of 2500 calories.
WOMEN would need to eat 11 and a half bowls each day to get their daily 2000-calorie allowance.
MUSHY peas are made from dried marrowfat peas soaked overnight in water and bicarbonate of soda.
Then they are simmered with a little sugar and salt to form a lumpy soup.
ONE bowl of mushy peas forms one of your five a day portions.
A 300g tin of mushy peas costs from just 19p for supermarket own brands.
ONE bowl of mushy peas provides 12 per cent of your recommended 18g of fibre per day.
WHEN US President George W Bush made an official visit to Britain in 2003 he and then PM Tony Blair had mushy peas with their fish and chips at Blair's local pub the Dun Cow Inn in Sedgefield, Durham.
SOMETIMES mint sauce is added for extra flavour.
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