Jim Cunning did not need his GP to tell him he was overweight. The plumber, with a weakness for Milky Ways, knew he had allowed himself to pile on the pounds.

Jim Cunning did not need his GP to tell him he was overweight. The plumber, with a weakness for Milky Ways, knew he had allowed himself to pile on the pounds.

"Things just slipped out of laziness," he says. "When I pay for an all-inclusive holiday I usually get my money's worth. I went to the Dominican Republic last year and must have put on nearly a stone in a fortnight. Usually I resolve to take the weight off, but last year I never got around to it and then it ran into Christmas and suddenly I looked at myself and thought: What's happening here?' "

When he went for check-up the nurses who saw him told him about Counterweight.

Mr Cunning, 52, from Airdrie, met a dietician, who advised him to make just two changes - swap the mid-morning breakfast roll and chocolate bar for cereal and fruit and drink two 500ml bottles of water a day.

He has also started walking up flights of stairs when he's working in blocks of flats and switching cake for yoghurt and fruit at lunchtime.

Already he has lost 20lbs and perhaps more importantly two-and-a-half inches from his waist. "I went out to buy new jeans on Saturday because the ones I have got are falling off me," he says.