Now he has combined these qualities to write a magazine he hopes will change people’s lives.
It isn’t a worthy tome in the usual sense, nor a work of fiction – if you don’t count the ‘neurocrone’ that can help you lose weight while eating cake and watching TV.
The Eat Less Food Diet book aims to assist readers shed stones without investing a small fortune in fancy potions or membership fees; the book itself costs just ?¨º3, or ?¨º1.50 to have an ebook. And it will cause you to laugh at the same time.
Andy, 45, lost more than two stone in only 6 months after devising the foolproof method a couple of years ago.
“I felt increasingly uncomfortable with my shape. I was quite sad about it at times and frequently felt that people judged me since i couldn’t control my very own body, or at best things i place in it,” he says.
“The very first thing Used to do was to work out why I wanted to lose weight and to give myself a definite goal. I swayed between wanting to be in One Direction and getting into a great old pair of jeans. I went for that jeans.”
He also didn’t over-do it: “Most dieters, myself included, give in. We are saying: I’m going to stop eating bread and give up the booze; I’ll visit the gym every day and cook blueberry wholemeal tofu wraps every night. By lunchtime we’re eating our very own body weight in M&Ms.”
So Andy began reducing fatty foods and flapjack, and concentrating on getting his five-a-day fruit and vegetables.
“But because I haven’t given anything up I can still drink – I’m a real ale fan – which makes the odd flapjack sacrifice bearable!”
At home in Millhouses, Andy’s growing concentrate on what he ate gave him a brand new interest too. Now he does most of the cooking for wife Nikki and sons Reuben, Dylan and Zach.
“I’ve slowly learnt how to cook, which for me has meant falling in manlove with Jamie Oliver and the Hairy Bikers. If the Hairy Bikers can diet, anyone can!”
And, two years after losing his extra weight, Andy was keen to pass on the few ideas to other would-be dieters.
“I found the entire dietary fads thing frustrating,” he states. “On average dieters gain four pounds and it’s unsurprising. There are diets where we’re expected to avoid carbs, to simply eat meat, to skip meals, never to skip meals, the Moose Droppings diet–
“We fail because we can not keep up with the habit of eating only yellow foods on a Tuesday therefore we slip to our old bad habits. I wanted to write something that was more honest than that.
“Just as importantly, I wanted to make it funny. Trying to diet can be very stressful, worrying at times. I needed to have a laugh about this.”