Man Tai Tseung used to like a takeaway. In fact he used to like four a week. “Friday night was curry night,” he says.

“I’d have a curry on a Monday too because all the Chinese takeaways were closed.

“Then midweek I’d order a pizza online. The other nights I’d maybe eat out at a Chinese restaurant or go to a chip shop.”

This big appetite inevitably had big consequences. At his heaviest, Man Tai tipped the scales at 18st 10lbs. For someone who is 5ft 3ins tall he was clearly overweight.

His fondness for junk food was hardly surprising. He grew up in a Chinese chip shop and worked as a chef in the family business.

He spent his life surrounded by spare ribs and duck pancakes, and couldn’t help tucking in. “Testing the food was part of the job,” he remembers, ruefully. 

When the 47-year-old from Bramhall, Stockport, became a high-flying business consultant, his diet didn’t change and his waistline continued to expand. When travelling on overseas trips he had to squeeze into aeroplane seats, struggling to buckle his seatbelt. 

Then a year and a half ago all this changed. Man Tai became a new man. Today he is seven stone lighter thanks to a strict diet and fitness regime.

He managed to kick his taste for takeaways without town hall chiefs imposing a fat tax on his local chippy.

Oldham council is considering doing just that, introducing a levy on everything from kebab shops and fast-food outlets to tackle the ballooning problem of obesity.

Man Tai reckons it’s the wrong approach entirely.

“That’s not addressing the core problem,” he says. “Raising taxes in that way would tackle the symptoms but not the problem, which is people’s relationship with food.

“Maybe people wouldn’t buy takeaway food as often because the shops would put up prices. But the shops would also get rid of the more expensive food on their menus leaving the cheaper stuff.

“And that’s not good because generally the cheaper food is less healthy. So actually it could have a negative effect.”

Council insiders say the planned levy would be used to fund healthy-eating campaigns and litter-picking. They want to tackle the glut of fast-food shops which have sprung up across the borough.

And they hope it will address Oldham’s growing childhood obesity problem. Nearly one in five children aged 10-11 in the town are currently classed as obese, more than the regional and national average.

Health campaigners have backed the plans but Man Tai believes the council have got it wrong.

He says: “To lose weight you must change your lifestyle. It’s about coping with your environment, having regular meal times and breaking habits.

“I always had a curry on a Friday. You get into these habits and they are hard to break but it’s about changing your relationship with food.”

He’s not touched a takeaway on a Friday, or indeed any other day, for 18 months. The change came after he had a dawning realisation about the scale of his weight gain.

“Whether I was in denial or not I don’t know,” he says. “It basically crept up to such an extent that I didn’t really know I was actually fat.”

Deciding to fight the flab, he enrolled on the Lighter Life programme, a low-calorie meal replacement regime hat has attracted its fair share of controversy with experts saying the diet does not address the cause of obesity and only leads to short term success.

But Man Tai disagrees: “I used to eat even when I wasn’t hungry and the programme helped me recognise that.”

As a reformed takeaway addict who has dropped from a waistline of around 58ins to 34ins, he has some advice for council bosses who want to cut obesity, and it doesn’t involve taxing takeaway shops to fund healthy-eating campaigns.

“There needs to be much better systems across the healthcare professions to help people. Doctors, nurses, they all need to be in a position to offer advice on healthy eating.

“The core of the problem is our attitude to food. And people need direct help in understanding the importance of the choices they make.”

Other councils in Greater Manchester are said to be watching carefully the developments in Oldham. If the plans get the go-ahead there could be a tax raid on fast-food outlets across the region.

That wouldn’t affect Man Tai who says his days of feasting on fast-food four times a week are behind him.

“I’ve cut out takeaways but I still have meals in restaurants. The key is managing food not avoiding it.”

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