This Welsh man reveals how he almost 'ate himself' – before losing 190kg

Lying in a hospital bed, Ioan Pollard weighed 286 kilograms, his kidney was failing and he didn't know if he would survive.

Aged 27 at the time, he needed a transplant but was not eligible due to his weight.

“…The hospital staff told me that the next eight hours were critical and I might not be alive in the morning,” Ioan recalls.

A month after his 27th birthday, Ioani almost lost his life.

He had scratches on his legs which had turned septic.

"It was immediately clear that my kidneys were severely damaged," said Ioan, who lives in Caernarfon, Gwynedd, Wales.

"They told me that things weren't looking good and that we needed to start talking about dialysis."

"My body size and weight meant I had no chance of getting a transplant. The truth is, I was very obese."

And of course, food was a major concern for friends and family, especially his mother.

Looking at his clothes from a period when they were purchased from specialty stores, his waist had reached over 180 cm.

“I had no self-control,” says Ioan, who is S4C’s digital news editor. “Food controlled everything I did and the way I lived my life.”

"At the time I didn't admit that I was addicted to food and overeating, but, looking back, I definitely was."

"When I look back, I feel embarrassed that I had chosen to live my life this way. Only now do I realize what I had done to myself and my body."

Over a period of seven years, with the help of stomach-reduction and skin-removal surgeries, he lost more than half his weight – 191 kg – and he had qualified for a transplant.

After that, it was discovered that his mother could donate one of her kidneys to her son.

"I want Ioani to live his life, he deserves it," she says.

Ioan, now 35, now hopes for a healthier future.

"I've been through so much. I just want this to work without any problems," he emphasizes.

"It's natural to worry more about Mom than myself, because Mom is putting herself in a vulnerable position in an attempt to improve my life. Everything depends on that now." /Telegraph/