A man who was so overweight he was unable to wear shoes has lost more than 12st, ditching his slippers and even finding himself a job.

At his heaviest Robin Dixon, 38, from Essex, weighed more than 35st and as a result suffered from lymphedema and leg ulcers - meaning his legs and feet swelled up so much he was unable to find shoes to fit, despite being an average size ten.

Confined to a pair of slippers, Robin, was unable to get a job and gorged on a diet of Lucozade, crisps, popcorn and McDonalds. He piled on the weight between 2000 and 2007 when he worked in an office and happened to sit opposite a vending machine.

He said: 'I'd never been stick thin but that was when the real trouble started.

'I'd get bored and the vending machine was right in front of me so I'd just grab a chocolate bar and a packet of crisps here and there to pass the time.

'It was all about convenience food and the damage was done before I realised what I was doing. Following a trial with Bodychef - during which he ate fresh, calorie-counted food hampers - he managed to shed a whopping 12 and a half stone in just 18 months and Robin was finally able to fit into shoes again and line up some job interviews.

He recently bagged himself a job as a discharge facilitator working for the NHS and started his new role just a few weeks ago.

Robin, who still lives with his parents, said: 'My health is still an ongoing issue but at least I'm on the right track now.

'I just couldn't see a way out before. I would try and get out but the only thing that would fit my feet were slippers and people would stare.

'I couldn't exactly go to job interviews in a pair of slippers so I felt stuck.

'Now I have a new pair of trainers and some work shoes.

'I'm really enjoying my job and when finances allow I hope to get my own place and gain even more independence.

A father was killed instantly when an uninsured student driver crashed into him as he walked along a motorway in the rain trying to find his girlfriend after they had rowed at his best friend’s wedding.

Peter Ridyard, 33, was ‘in good spirits’ and looking forward to starting a new job as an energy broker hours before he was hit by Mehren Chaudry, 21, an Audi driver who admitted having smoked cannabis the morning before the crash. 

Mr Ridyard was drinking at the wedding at a hotel in Bury, Greater Manchester, and posted a final picture of himself on Facebook with the caption ‘And I'm ready, boom’ before he had a row with partner, Carmel Mitchell, 40, on August 12 last year. The couple had a disagreement between 11pm and midnight and Miss Mitchell left the hotel to sleep in her car, despite Mr Ridyard begging her not to go. 

The next day she refused to believe he was dead when police notified her of the crash, which also saw Chaudry smash into three other cars.

He was banned from driving for 15 months and fined £140 after admitting to driving without insurance and with excess cannabis last year. 

Mr Ridyard was hit by Chaudry, 21, as he walked along the dark and wet southbound carriageway at 1am with his belongings in a pillowcase.

Chaudry had hired the car for the evening, and was driving his friends home to Blackburn from a burger bar in Manchester. Admitting that he had smoked cannabis on the morning of the crash, Chaudry said: 'We headed home to Blackburn. I had not been drinking alcohol. I had not taken any medication, illegal or legal.

'I do not drink. I had taken some cannabis earlier on in the morning. I use cannabis once in a blue moon not very regularly.

'I was on the M66 south going towards Blackburn. It is a road that is very familiar to me. At the time it was raining and it was quite foggy an there were no lights on the motorway just car headlights. There are lights on that stretch of road but they just weren't on.

'The speed was down to 50mph because of the weather. I was driving at 50 to 55mph. 'At the time it was raining heavily and the wipers were on full and it was a bit misty as well because of the rain. The visibility was very reduced. I was in the right outside lane. 

'I was not distracted. My eyes were on the road. My friends were having a conversation in the back but I wasn't paying attention.

Chaudry said he heard 'a massive slam under the car' and just saw 'a white t-shirt' when he hit M Ridyard.

'There was a lot of blood outside and inside the car including on myself. I remember smelling alcohol or beer,' he said. 

'My driver's window was open. There was the smell of alcohol and it wasn't from me because I hadn't been drinking that night. It was too quick to see anything.

The brother of the male Google engineer fired after a memo saying women are biologically less likely to get to the top of the tech world has hit back, telling critics: 'Read the whole thing.'

James Damore, 28, was terminated by the internet giant on Monday for a violation of the company's code of conduct after the memo became a viral phenomenon.

It also said Google was censoring conservative members of staff, and Damore is now considering his legal options, with some lawyers saying he has a case under the First Amendment for suing Google. He has already filed a labor complaint over his treatment.

On Tuesday his younger brother Josh, 23, defended James and said that his critics have been selectively quoting from the text.

He said: 'It's a 10-page work so you can pull a lot of words out of that and manipulate what he wrote. It's important to read the whole thing. Damore was brought up with Joshua and their older brother John Damore Jr, 30, in Romeville, Illinois, by parents John and Deborah. 

He studied at Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, graduated with a degree in molecular and cellular biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, then was a postgraduate student at MIT.

His mother is a computer science graduate who is now an executive at a logistics company.

He is now at the center of one of the biggest storms to hit Google, whose parents company Alphabet is worth $649 billion. 

Damore had posted on Facebook when he joined Google in 2013 about his excitement - but four years later his career was terminated with a scathing email from the company's most senior staff to all employees.

On Monday Google CEO Sundar Pichai said: 'portions of the memo violate our code of conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.' 

Pichai said he was cutting his family vacation short in order to return to Google headquarters and deal with the aftermath of Damore's essay on gender.

In a note emailed to Google employees on Monday, Pichai said employees have a right to express themselves but 'to suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK.'

Damore, who had worked at the tech company since 2013, confirmed to both Reuters and Bloomberg via emails that he had been fired.

Damore later told Reuters he was exploring all possible legal remedies and that before being fired he had submitted a charge to the US National Labor Relations Board accusing Google upper management of trying to shame him into silence.

'It's illegal to retaliate against an NLRB charge,' he wrote in the email.

A fitness blogger is on a mission to re-educate people about what calories actually look like by comparing so-called 'healthy' snacks to 'naughty' treats.

Lucy Mountain, aka The Fashion Fitness Foodie, posts Instagram pictures of crisps next to the same snack made from root vegetables, and vitamin-enriched breakfast biscuits next to a packet of McVitie's to show how these treats often contain a very similar number of calories.

The stunning blonde 25-year-old, from London has built up a following of 65,000 people with her self-dubbed 'no BS' approach which aims to prove that no food in of itself will help you to lose or make you put on weight.

Her aim is to teach people that they can eat what they want - whether it's a handful of Fruit Pastilles or a handful of almonds - and still get the body they desire if they put their food choices into the context of a mostly healthy lifestyle and pay attention to portion sizes.  Lucy, whose Instagram feed is littered with comparison photos and pictures of her enviable figure in fitness clothes, says she wants to teach people that they don't need to cut out any foods from their diet if they really love them.

Unlike many other Instagram fitness role models, she refreshingly admits to preferring a handful of Fruit Pastilles as a snack instead of almonds, and confesses to the occasional boozy night out. 'We're bombarded with these kind of accounts that you almost become numb to it all. 

'Right from the beginning I have wanted my account to actually add value to other people's lives - and I hope my food comparisons have been a great way to do this.'

Lucy's honest approach to fitness, food and healthy eating has won her legions of followers and inspired her to create a second Instagram account dedicated to her food comparisons.

Her photos bust the myth that some foods are fattening and some foods are best for fat loss. Instead, she says the same meal could help you to lose weight or to gain weight depending on your portion sizes, and on how many calories you are expending through exercise in a day compared to how many you are consuming. 

Her posts receive thousands of likes each, due to this honest and inspiring approach. 

She explained: 'No matter what I post, I'm 100 per cent myself and I think people appreciate that.

A married mother-of-two from Michigan has been sentenced to up to 15 years prison for having sex with two teenage boys after luring them with naked photos on social media last summer.

Brooke Lajiness, 38, of Lima Township, learned her fate on Monday in a Washtenaw County courtroom, a little over a month after she pleaded guilty to two counts of having intercourse with a 14-year-old and one for having oral sex with a 15-year-old.

As part of the plea deal, Lajiness also admitted to one count each of accosting a child for immoral purposes and furnishing obscenity to children by sending nude photographs of herself to a minor.  In exchange, prosecutors agreed to dismiss 10 other charges against the beauty salon worker, who will spend a minimum of four years and nine months behind bars, and up to 15 years, according to News. 

When given a chance to speak before her sentencing, an emotional Lajiness read from a statement, calling what happened ’the biggest regret of my life.’ She also said she caused her family ‘great pain’ and was tormented by the thought that she will not be able to provide for her children while serving her sentence. 'I fear the toll this will take on my family in my absence,' Lajiness stated, according to reporting by Fox 2 Detroit, 'These last few months have been excruciating to watch the emotional affects this had on everyone around me.'

The court also heard from the mother of the younger teen, who wrote in her victim impact statement that was read aloud on her behalf that her son is currently in therapy after suffering emotional and psychological damage as a result of Lajiness' conduct.

‘Your actions will affect my son and his relationships with others for the rest of his life,’ she said.

Prosecutors asked the judge to hand Lajiness the harshest punishment available under the state sentencing guidelines, calling her a 'predator.'

Assistant County Prosecutor John Vella said Lajiness' husband of 16 years, David, had written a letter to the judge suggesting that his wife's insomnia was to blame for her actions. ‘Nobody's putting the blame on where it deserves, which it was this defendant's actions that brought her here. It's this defendant that chose to have sex with minors,’ Vella said.

David Lajiness appeared in the courtroom to support his spouse during her sentencing on Monday.

Lajiness’ defense attorney told the judge that his client has been struggling with mental health problems, but an expert has found that she was not a sexual predator and if she receives help, she is unlikely to re-offend in the future.

Instead of the stiffer sentence of 98 months to 15 years requested by the prosecution, the judge decided to hand down the more lenient prison term of 57 months to 15 years, citing her psychological problems and lack of past criminal record. 

Dramatic photographs show a teenage cyclist being hosed down by firefighters after a suspected acid attack near Kensington Palace this morning.

Emergency services rushed to the scene just after 10am after a 17-year-old boy was sprayed with a substance.

A fireman could be seen rinsing the side of the teenager's face with water while a police officer assisted him, near to the london residence of the Duke And Duchess of Cambridge.   A spokesman for the London Ambulance Service said the teenager had been taken to a major trauma unit for treatment. 

Meanwhile, Scotland Yard said its officers were called at 10.09am following reports someone had been sprayed with an unknown substance.

The fire and ambulance service rushed to the scene shortly after. 

This incident comes days after prosecutors announced a crackdown on acid attackers following a spate of crimes across London. 

Now thugs found carrying acid face four years in jail while those who throw it could get life behind bars. He said: 'From our side there is certainly a trend of these attacks becoming more prevalent and hopefully by publishing this information it is a useful exercise in show how the Crown will be dealing with offenders.'   

In London alone the number of cases has more than doubled from fewer than 200 in 2014 to 431 last year.

Areas such as the West Midlands and Essex have also seen large rises in acid attacks in recent years as reports have soared from 340 in 2014 to 843. 

In June aspiring model Resham Khan, 21, and her cousin Jameel Muhktar, 37, both suffered 'life-changing' burns in the attack in Beckton, East London.

While less than a month later five victims were subjected to separate acid attacks across London after a moped gang armed with the dangerous substance struck. 

Roman Abramovich publicly clashed with the wife he is splitting from over their competing plans for an island he ploughed £360million into, it emerged today.

The Russian oligarch, 50, best known as the owner of Chelsea football club, revealed yesterday that that he is breaking up with his third wife, 36-year-old art collector Dasha Zhukova.

It was claimed this afternoon that the pair's split came after they argued over their plans for New Holland, an island they took over in the centre of St Petersburg.

The couple planned to turn the island, which is separated from the rest of the historic city by three canals, into a tourist attraction, but had very different dreams for how it would turn out, entrepreneur Anton Vuima said.

They have reportedly been living 'separate lives' since Christmas, with Dasha being photographed holidaying with US socialites in the Hamptons, while Abramovich attended events in Russia alone.

Rumours swirl in Moscow over whether Zhukova had already been paid off by her older husband - who is worth an estimated £7billion - or whether lawyers are quietly gearing up for what would be one of the biggest divorces in history. 'Abramovich bought it and they found it hard to divide it. Daria wanted a disco place there, in open air Ibiza style.

'But Roman wanted to build a cultural centre, restaurants and create a kind of a small Europe, which is what happened in the end.

'They argued really badly over it, even in public in New Holland. It happened three or four times.'

It followed claims by Russian society blogger Elena Miro that famously private Abramovich and Zhukova had already organised a secret divorce deal back in May. 

Moscow lawyer Dmitry Golobolev estimated that Zhukova could get between 200 to 300 million dollars, a fraction of her husband's estimated wealth. 

In a joint statement yesterday, the couple said: 'After ten years together, the two of us have made the difficult decision to separate, but we remain close friends, parents and partners in the projects we developed together.' 

The peaceful tone of the statement suggests there will be no court cases with legal arguments over money, Russian family lawyer Georgy Tyurin told Russia's Kommersant newspaper.

'I think that it will be one of those so-called 'civilised divorces', without scandals, without dirty linen washed in the media and without division of jointly earned assets,' he said.

'The statement about them aiming to continue working on projects they started together confirms it. Abramovich will continue paying for them.