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Ben Lee's fingers are the first thing I look at when we meet. They look fairly ordinary to me, but are insured for £3 million. If that's not enough, Lee, 32, also holds the Guinness World Record for being the world’s fastest violinist, having performed Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee in 54.24 seconds, but he looks more male model than music maestro.

However, Lee was not always like this. In 2009 he weighed 14 and a half stone. He was touring as a backing musician for McFly and the Arctic Monkeys. "On tour the catering was amazing and there were a lot of late nights," he explains, before admitting weight loss was always at the back of his mind. "I didn't want to be a backing musician, I wanted the band behind me, but I had to slim up. To be at the front you've got to try to be attractive." He was in a band of his own, FUSE, with Linzi Stoppard, daughter-in-law of Miriam and Tom Stoppard, and things were going well. But he didn't have time to put the healthy eating regime into action.

In 2009 he had finished recording an album with Stoppard and was cycling from his home in Herne Hill to meet his wife, also a musician, for lunch near Covent Garden. "I was really into cycling and had a red Raleigh racing bike." A van pulled out into his track. "By the time he had seen me it was too late. He was going over my front wheel and I was on the ground." Lee was wearing cycling clips that attached him to the bike and he couldn't get out. "My knee was the size of a small football. It was horrendous. I had landed on my wrist so my whole body weight was down on it."

Lee didn't break anything but he had such bad ligament damage that he couldn't move his wrist. "They told me I might not get flexibility back. I'd been playing the violin for six hours every day for as long as I could remember. Suddenly I couldn't. I couldn't even pick up a shopping bag."

He fell into a dark depression. Telling bandmate Stoppard was difficult. "I felt a lot of responsibility. If I couldn't play violin, our band wouldn't work." Stoppard called every day to check on Lee and a week after the accident she told him about the competition for the fastest violinist and asked if he could do it.

And so began an intense schedule of training and a strict eating regime. Lee met trainer Adam Nelson at Brockwell Park Gym, who put him on his current programme. Lee gets up, eats a bowl of muesli, practises violin, goes to the gym, eats an egg-white omelette and practises some more. There are no more late-night burgers, pints and cigarettes and no carbohydrates after 6pm.

"For the first couple of weeks, blind faith was driving me. Working out hurt and made me feel sick. But you turn that pain into something good. It's a mental shift. I began thinking of my body like a machine and training like an athlete. My wife finds it difficult that I don't eat like her and that lunch is my biggest meal of the day but she realises it has helped me get back to what I was. I've started to see food just for its nutritional value," he says.

The weight loss happened drastically. In five months he went from 14 and a half stone to ten and a half. "My wife and I would go to parties and people didn't recognise me. They'd ask her where I was."

What really worked for Lee was the Insanity workout. "You do three minutes of working out at high intensity, then have 30 seconds to recover before you do another three minutes. Your heart rate zooms up and it gets the metabolism really quick. There's a simple equation that no diet books tell us. If you become fat, it's because you are eating more than you use. The Insanity workout burns off food for seven hours."

Drinking was one of the most difficult things. "Beer is full of sugar. Red wine, one glass is good for you, but I found I had to cut it off. If you have one, you want more. If I'm going to a party, I'll allow myself a night off, but generally I'm completely off it. I'm lucky my friends are supportive. And my wife is glad I can drive her home if I'm not drinking."

Occasionally he allows himself a few squares of dark chocolate but he's learned how to fit eating around his life. "I need to eat every three hours, so if I'm out of the house I'll take a snack." Today he's got a wholemeal pitta with sugar-free peanut butter. "If I need to get something on the go, I'll get a Hoisin duck wrap from Pret. It's not got too much bread. If I'm out for a curry with the lads, I'll have chappatis because it's light. And no rice. But I'll have loads of spinach and okra."

He has got back on the bike but has agreed with his management that it's best not to do it too often. "It's not worth the risk."

EAT LIKE A SUPERHUMAN

Breakfast A bowl of muesli with soya milk or orange juice.

Morning snack Brown pitta bread and spinach with an egg-white omelette.

Lunch Wholewheat pasta with chicken or prawns. Or a stir-fry.

Dinner Chicken cooked on a griddle pan with garlic and pepper, or salmon. A big salad. As many vegetables as you like.

MORE DIETS FOR DUDES

The fasting diet

600 calories a day twice a week, then men eat what they like on the other five.

The caveman diet

Dine like our Palaeolithic ancestors — veg, berries, fish and spare cuts of meat.

The Dukan

Uber-fast results and protein a-go-go? Men can't help but lose pounds.