Margate F.C.'s Man V Fat program sees Kent Men put in a 10 team-league, where shedding weight gets you just as close to the trophy as scoring goals.
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00:00 Chipswich Town, FC Copenhagen-Darts, Eintracht Frankfurt, OB City, Margate Flanjeman and
00:08 Monster Munchen Gladbach.
00:10 Yes, you are hearing me right.
00:12 Man v. Fat Football is a national organisation, with 150 clubs around the country bringing
00:17 in members who want to change their weight and their lives.
00:21 Before the 30-minute six-a-side matches, the players are weighed and goal bonuses are given
00:25 to teams based on how much weight they've lost.
00:27 The organisation also provides them with fitness tips and healthy recipe ideas.
00:31 And last season, one team, Olympic Mayonnaise, lost a total of 154 kilograms, or 24 stone,
00:38 between the ten of them.
00:40 This earned them the nomination for Team of the Year at the Man v. Fat Football National
00:44 Awards at the National Football Museum in Manchester.
00:46 Yes, I mean, obviously it was an honour.
00:50 You know, we've sort of done quite a lot outside of the sort of normal MPF things, you know,
00:56 raising money, we raised about two and a half grand.
00:59 We had four lads turn up, you know, in an overweight health range and ended up in BMI.
01:07 And yeah, we all sort of bonded as friends as well.
01:09 So even though the teams have reshuffled now, and I'm part of a different team, so are the
01:15 rest of the lads.
01:16 We're all still friends, you know, the group chat's still going and all the rest of it.
01:20 Margate's Man v. Fat are up for ten of the twelve nominations, including the most active
01:24 member, Coach of the Year and Community Hero.
01:28 They also participated in the national 1 Million Steps Challenge for Diabetes UK, where they
01:32 walked an average of 1.7 million steps each and raised £2,345 for the charity.
01:39 Olympic Mayonnaise's weight loss has also impacted their players' lives significantly.
01:43 Yeah, so when I first joined I was about 22 stone, and since then I've lost three stone.
01:50 Still got a bit to go, but as a process obviously it's helped me lose weight, and along with
01:56 the Monday nights that we normally do, we also have an 11-a-side team and a couple of
02:01 days during the week we do social games as well.
02:04 So there's the opportunity for players to play up to four times a week, which is fantastic.
02:09 And our 11-a-side team this season entered the national tournament and managed to get
02:13 to the semi-finals, so sort of really positive in terms of competitive football going to
02:19 sort of another level in a way.
02:21 Talking to the community here, everyone describes it as friendly, and even though fouls are
02:25 pretty common, the team reshuffling means everyone knows each other and is here to help
02:29 one another on their weight loss journey.
02:33 Well that was the end of Chipswitch Town versus Eintracht Frankfurter.
02:37 Back to you in the studio.
02:38 Finn McDermid for KMTV.