A MAN who lost more than 23 stone after having weight-loss surgery says it changed his life.

Wayne Mentessi, 33, tipped the scales at 38 stone four years ago, gorging daily on a diet of junk food and fizzy drinks.

After two obesity operations, the Southend finance manager now weighs just 14st 11lbs and admitted: “It’s changed my life.”

Mr Mentessi spoke to the Echo in the wake of a report which confirmed surgery to help weight loss was safe.

He said: “Years ago I’d go to hospital and drive across the car park from one part of the building to another, so I wouldn’t have to walk the short distance.

“My mobility is 100 per cent now and I’m able to socialise. I wasn’t housebound before, but I wouldn’t go anywhere which was more than a short distance from a car park.”

Mr Mentessi’s mother died when he was a baby and he was brought up by his grandparents. He said he started putting on weight after comfort eating as a child.

At his heaviest, on a typical day, he would have a McDonald’s breakfast, then snack on crisps and fizzy drinks through the morning.

For lunch, he would have a takeaway – often kebab and chips – stopping for another McDonald’s, on his way home from work before eating his evening meal.

He said: “My palate has completely changed since then.”

The turning point came when he suffered a blood clot on his lung about five years ago, and he had to go to hospital in a specialist bariatric ambulance because he weighed so much.

He added: “It made me realise my weight was something I inficted on other people. It was rather embarrassing.”

Mr Mentessi lost about seven stone on his own account, before having a sleeve gastrectomy in April 2013 to reduce his stomach’s capacity to about a quarter of what it was. He then had a duodenal switch op earlier this year.

The National Bariatric Surgery Registry recently published a report after reviewing more than 18,200 weight-loss ops between 2011 and 2013.

In it the organisation suggests obesity operations offer “significant financial savings” to the health service.

The report says more than 65 per cent of obese patients who had type two diabetes showed no sign of the condition two years after weight loss surgery.