Back in 1999 I was a volunteer with the Prince's Trust for 3 months.

One of the final team challenges was to climb Mount Snowdon. At the time I was seriously overweight and weighed about 25 stone/350 lbs/158.7 kg. I got about a mile from the bus and gave up.

In December 2012 I started to use a food and exercise diary and have now lost 10.2 stone/143 lbs/64.8 kg and currently weigh around 14.8 stone/207.2 lbs/93.9 kg.

On August 27th 2016 I will be going back to Snowdon to do the climb that I should have done back in 1999 and I'll be raising money for the Prince's Trust as they helped me all those years ago (and this is an itch I want to scratch).

I'll be starting at Llanberis and walking to the summit of Mount Snowdon and then walking back (total distance about 10 miles).

Musical accompaniment on many trips to the gym (and these will be played on my personal MP3 player on the climb) has been provided by AC/DC, Rainbow, Deep Purple, Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, Simon and Garfunkel, Eric Clapton, The Darkness, Guns n Roses, Led Zeppelin, Motorhead, Mike Oldfield, Pink Floyd, Queen, Jethro Tull, Genesis, Wilko Johnson & Roger Daltrey, Green Day, Steve Earle, Frank Zappa, The White Stripes, Whitesnake, The Band, U2, Tom Petty, The Travelling Wilburys, Meatloaf, Neil Young, Dire Straits, Black Sabbath, Ozzie Osbourne, Electric Light Orchestra, ELP (Emmerson, Lake and Palmer), Rick Wakeman.....and Peter Skellern (this tells you all you need to know about my taste in music).

How did I get to be 25 stone?  Well, I got bullied in school and stopped eating properly for 20 years.  Lots of bullies, managers, teachers, doctors and nurses gave me advice along the lines of "move more and eat less".  I joined a gym in 2005 and went 5 times a week (sometimes more).  By November of 2012 I hadn't lost ANY weight.

Then I had a conversation with a friend on Facebook which changed my life.  She suggested that I wasn't eating enough and that my body could be in starvation mode.  She suggested keeping a food and exercise diary on a website (www.myfitnesspal.com).  I started the diary in a very cynical frame of mind as lots of other diets hadn't worked and I was convinced that a food diary wasn't going to work either.  After a couple of days keeping the diary, I realised I wasn't eating enough.  I was eating less than 1200 calories a day and my body was storing the fat rather than using it as fuel.  So I started eating more.  By the end of January 2013 when I weighed myself I had lost 10lbs so I carried on keeping and will go on keeping it until I am at a healthy weight of between 12.5 and 13.5 stone (which is a healthy weight for a man of my height).

And the funny things is that to this day I have never met the friend who suggested my keeping the diary (and thus pretty much saved my life) face to face.  We have only ever communciated over the internet.

So please give generously. My target for the climb is £500.