Who we are

MAN v FAT was founded by writer Andrew Shanahan, who was struggling with his weight but was frustrated at how local slimming clubs were aimed at women. This made him wonder how many other men out there were struggling with weight loss - and MAN v FAT was born. We started life as a website and digital magazine.

We took MAN v FAT into the real world with the launch of MAN v FAT Football – a football league exclusively for overweight men who want to lose weight. Players are rewarded not just for winning games but for losing weight too, with weekly weight loss progress counting towards team goals. It was a hit, and since then, we’ve launched over 150 MAN v FAT Football clubs across the UK.

We launched our first Scottish MAN v FAT Football club in Glasgow.

2018 was a busy year - we launched our first Welsh club in Cardiff, went international with the launch of MAN v FAT Australia, were a finalist in the Royal Society for Public Health Healthier Lifestyle awards and we won a UK Active Healthy Communities award.

We became a part of award-winning healthy lifestyle provider Thrive Tribe’s family of services and were able to expand our efforts to reach more men than ever before.

We took MAN v FAT to Northern Ireland with the launch of our first club in Belfast, and expanded our mental health and wellbeing support with the introduction of MAN v FAT Foundations in association with Koa Health.

We celebrated fantastic weight loss success with our first in-person MAN v FAT awards, and we partnered with leading sportswear manufacturer Hope + Glory to create some amazing MAN v FAT Football kit. We also hit a grand total of 500,000lbs lost by MAN v FAT Football members – incredible stuff.