I know that it is the start of the year — the time we seek to better ourselves and maybe, just maybe visit the gym (at risk of coming across any of these guys).

But this story is enough to put anyone off. Gym-obsessed Lewis Brown from Suffolk took his fitness regime way too far this summer by huffing a load of the diet pills DNP.

For those of you who don’t know what these are, they were basically first used on an industrial scale in French munition factories during WW1 to make explosives. Somehow they were developed for human consumption and are now used to facilitate fast fat burning. Scary stuff.

There is a lot of controversy surrounding the use of the drug (not just that it was used to make explosives) but because of the deadly side effects, which should be reason enough to stay away from the things.

Unfortunately Lewis didn’t get the memo as he switched from using steroids (not any safer) to DNP, which he bought online for only £30. He said he did it in order to help him get the perfect ‘beach bod’.

Rather than sticking to the regular dose, he ended up taking eight in one day, which hiked up his body temperature to nearly 42 degrees. After he was rushed to hospital, the doctors decided to put him into a forced coma as the lethal chemicals were cooking him from the inside, causing his muscles to die.

Fortunately Lewis was saved, although the doctors had to amputate his leg as the muscles were just too wasted. How gruesome is that?

Lewis said:

I was so out of it about getting bigger that I thought I was unstoppable.

I just wanted to be better than anyone else.

I was a different person then – everyone has said. All I was interested in was getting bigger and I just didn’t know what I was doing.

I’m just lucky that I’m still alive.

I remember seeing a story about DNP and people who died and just thinking they weren’t taking them right.

But I have done it myself now and I can tell you, you just get caught up in it so quickly.

Not being funny, but if I read a story about someone dying from the pills, I certainly would not risk taking eight in one sitting — that’s madness.

Either way you’ve got to feel for the guy — he was looking at a quick fix to get the perfect body and has wound up with one leg. It’s pretty appalling that these pills are readily available online and if anything it should warn you not to go to extremes to look a certain way. Anyway, we know it’s all about the dad bod now.