A 28-stone man who feared he would never find love has lost more than half his body weight and says he is now looking forward to his wedding.

Dean Clarkson swapped fizzy drinks and takeaways for a juicing diet and shed 17-stone in less than a year.

The 30-year-old said he lacked confidence and found it difficult to talk to girls until he turned his life around and plucked up the courage to ask out old school friend Andrea Menzies, also 30.

Slimmed down Dean

The pair, both from Shildon, are now planning to get married next year and Dean says he couldn’t be happier.

“I did start to wonder if I would ever meet someone. At one point, I got to the realisation that I probably wouldn’t.” He said.

“If I hadn’t lost the weight I would have never asked Andrea out. But now I had the confidence to message her on Facebook and think that she might actually like someone like me.

“My dad and her mum were head boy and head girl together at school and we were born within two days of each other in the same hospital ward. It’s like we were meant to be.”

Marketing executive Dean struggled with his weight from a young age and watched it spiral out of control as he got older.

He added: “At my heaviest I was around 28-stone but as you can imagine at that size, it’s very hard to be weighed and know exactly how big I was.

“I was generally just not caring about what I ate. I was eating too much of the wrong things.”

After watching a documentary about the story of an obese man who drank only juice for 60 days to lose weight Dean started researching the diet.

He said: “I was wondering if it was just a fad, but I had managed to give up fizzy pop and hadn’t touched a drop so I thought, if I can do that I can give this a go.

“Before I knew it, I had lost 15 stones by September.”

Dean detoxed and drank only juice for two months before introducing soup and eventually starting to eat food again.

After his weight loss however, Dean was left with masses of excess skin so he underwent a body lift which took over 12 hours.

He added: “I was just so thankful to have finally had the operation. I had so much more confidence straight away. I felt like a whole new man.

“I saw a girl named Andrea pop up on Facebook and I recognised her from my class at school. I hadn’t spoken to her in years.

“I decided to reach out to her and catch up and we just hit it off.”

After 17 months together, Dean proposed to nursery nurse Andrea on her birthday last July while in Venice.

He now weighs a healthy 11 stones and six pounds and no longer juices or weighs himself.