World’s Fattest Man Wins Dieting Title

As the world's heaviest man, tipping the scales at 560kg (88 stone), Manuel Uribe had a record but not one he was particularly proud of. Now, having lost half that weight in two years including 180kg in a 12-month period, Uribe has a world-beating performance he is far happier about.

"I feel great," the 42-year-old former computer technician said by telephone from the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, where he lives with his mother, after it emerged that he will earn a Guinness World Records mention for the first year of his diet. "One day I will be able to walk again, I don't know exactly when, but it will happen for sure." His aim is to reach 120kg over the next two years, thanks largely to a new low-carb diet.

"The weight still comes off," he said, "but it comes off slower now."

Uribe got himself on the road to recovery after appealing for help on Mexican television's most watched nightly news. Depressed after his girlfriend left him, he allowed the cameras to linger on his cascades of flesh and fat as he sat immobile and desperate.

The ensuing publicity had nutritionists beating a trail to his reinforced bed, only to discover that his internal organs were in uncannily good condition. Diet experts then clamoured to sign him up. Uribe plumped for the Zone, of Jennifer Aniston fame, and agreed to film a documentary with the Discovery Channel, which has organised outings for him with the aid of a fork-lift truck.

Bedridden for the last six years, Uribe says he spends most of his time answering the hundreds of emails he receives every day, between eating five specially prepared meals at specific times. He also runs a small clothes shop set up in his home, and hosts a support group for the obese on Sunday afternoons.

Uribe has a new girlfriend too. They first became friends when she sought him out after her obese husband died of a heart attack. "My aim now is to do God's work and spread the word about how to live well," Uribe said. "It's incredible that man can go to the moon and fix a computer but doesn't know how to eat."

Obesity rates have soared in Mexico, with the latest studies suggesting it may even have overtaken the United States as the fattest nation in the world.