Forrest Lump

After wearing out 14 pairs of shoes and 50 pairs of socks, a man branded "Forrest Lump" was set to amble into New York last night after a 3,000-mile walk across the United States.

Steve Vaught, 40, tipped the scales at a few pounds short of 30 stones when he set off from his Californian home 13 months ago, determined to lose weight and regain his self-esteem. During his odyssey, he shed nine stones - although he ended up putting more than two stones back on - and saw both his wife, April, and a lucrative book deal slip through his fingers.

Yet Mr Vaught, whose mantra during his journey has been "cure the mind and the ass will follow", says the walk has given him a clearer idea of his future. He wants to continue to inspire the obese through his website thefatmanwalking.com, which turned him into a celebrity and allowed more than two million people to follow his progress across the US.

"Whatever I do from here, it's going to be something that's more of an adventure, more of something that would be life-affirming rather than something that just draws life from you," said the former marine and car mechanic.

First on his agenda, however, will be an emotional reunion with his children, Melanie, nine, and Marc, four, whom he was accused of abandoning when he set off.

He faces an impending divorce but said: "April and I are better off being friends, and I'll be a better father to my kids because I am a better person for this. If I get to New York and I'm fat and people don't like me, so what? At least myself and the kids will like me."

Mr Vaught began his walk barely able to cover ten miles a day, wilting in the California heat and struggling with a 50lb backpack containing water, a tent, sleeping bag, first-aid kit and other essential supplies such as protein bars and a laptop for his online journal.

As the weight began to fall off and his stamina improved, he built up to walking for ten hours and more than 20 miles a day, a far cry from the times he had to stop to catch his breath just to get from one side of a supermarket to the other. "I can't believe I could walk across the country ... I'm a changed man," he said.

The publicity surrounding his journey turned a private experience into a cause célèbre, with documentary crews filming his progress and several national television networks planning to cover his arrival in New York.

During the trip, he received approaches from vitamin and diet pill companies, a dating agency and even the makers of a porn film with offers of contracts. A $200,000 (£107,000) book deal with HarperCollins fell through in a dispute over content, but calls from other publishers have been so frequent that Mr Vaught has had to appoint a personal assistant.

The trip, which was to have been a six-month adventure but ended up taking 13, was not without its pitfalls. He was forced to take a 21-day break last winter to try to shed more weight through intensive exercise, and a radical change of diet half way through caused painful kidney stones.

Even so, Mr Vaught says it was an improvement from his days battling depression after he killed an elderly couple in a car accident 16 years ago and spent ten days in jail after being convicted of manslaughter.

Though he has dropped about seven stones, his exact weight loss during the walk is unlikely ever to be known. The scales in convenience stores and supermarkets that he has been using along the way go up to only 21 stones. Instead, he measured his progress by how much he had been able to lengthen the straps of his backpack.

Mr Vaught says he now has the inspiration to continuing losing weight and to help others in a similar position. "Being overweight darkens every good thing that you achieve in your life and even prevents some things from happening at all," he said.