The Communities and Local Government Secretary says he has been walking five miles every day and dieting since April
Larger than life Tory politician Eric Pickles has spoken of his battle to lose weight.
The Communities and Local Government Secretary revealed he’s been trying to slim down since April and claimed: “It does work!”
His own austerity policy has involved eating less and walking up to five miles a day.
He said: “I am a biggish guy, admittedly. But there is awful lot less of me than there was on 16th of April when I started this process of losing weight. It’s a really hard thing to do.”
Without revealing his full weight, Mr Pickles, 62, said he no longer had a body mass index of 35, over which people are classed as severely obese.
He told Radio 4’s Any Questions programme: “I have a mass index of 32 and it’s going down.
“I have not really mentioned it before, but I decided to do something about it. I walk eight kilometres every day and watch what I eat. It does work.”
He’s not the only political heavyweight to lose weight.
Chancellor George Osborne has been on the celebrity 5:2 diet while his Labour counterpart Ed Balls slimmed down while training for the London marathon.
Mr Pickles has long had to endure gags about his ample frame.
But in a previous interview, he claimed he wasn’t worried about his appeance.
“I’m bald, overweight, have a Yorkshire accent and a silly name, so you’ve got to expect some kind of personal stuff. It doesn’t give me even the slightest worry,” he said.
