Fearing divorce, obese Turkish man sheds 63 kilos

IZMIR, Turkey

Fear of divorce spurred a Turkish middle-aged man to lose 63 kilograms in a little more than a year.

Once a 155-kilogram man, Huseyin Ari, 53, from the western city of Izmir, said his wife had threatened to divorce him, "jokingly." 

This distressed him quite a bit.

"She told me if I go on like this, we might face a breakup," said the father of two. "I immediately found an obesity center to ask for medical help."

While her divorce jab may have been playful, Fatma took her husband's weight issues seriously. For years, Fatma had to take care of her ill bedridden mother and she dreaded having to relive a similar situation. 

"I warned him seriously. We needed to do something and we did it together successfully," she said, visibly grateful to be relieved of concerns for her husband's health. 

A shift supervisor in an iron and steel plant, Huseyin said he started to gain weight almost 20 years ago because of "delicious food." After a while, he simply lost track. 

He now wears size 50 size trousers, down from size 70. And he no longer boasts a 140 centimeters waistline thanks to a strict diet and daily hour-long walks.

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