Manuel Uribe of Monterrey, Mexico is the world's heaviest man weighing 555 kgs (85.5 stone or 1,225lb). Due to years of over-eating and an unhealthy lifestyle, Manuel Uribe has been confined to his bed for the past 5 years.
After a television plea for help in January 2006, Manuel was inundated with offers from surgeons, doctors and dieticians from around the world. After considering the options, Manuel decided on a particular weight loss method.
Currently on a diet, he now weighs 800 pounds, but still can't stand on his own, and spends his days in a special industrial-size bed.
"I had an obesity problem for many years, a very significant one. I was gaining and gaining weight. I was on every diet you can imagine," Uribe said.
"I used to eat normal, just like all Mexicans do. … Beans, rice, flower tortilla, corn tortilla, French fries, hamburgers, subs and pizzas, whatever regular people eat. I worked as a technician, repairing typewriters, electronic calculators and computers. So I worked on a chair. It was a sedentary life," he said.
Uribe is beyond the kind of overweight that comes from fast food and lack of exercise. Doctors call it morbid obesity.
According to the National Institutes of Health, obesity means weighing 20 percent or more than your ideal body weight, and it's a health risk.
Morbid obesity is altogether different. Sometimes called "clinically severe obesity," it means you're 100 pounds or more over ideal body weight, with a body mass index of 40 or higher.
Uribe doesn't gain weight like the rest of us. Brain chemistry, genetic mutation, addiction, psychological pain -- or an unhappy combination of all of them -- makes morbid obesity one of the biggest mysteries of medicine.
Incredibly enough, in spite of his enormous weight, Uribe says he is in good health.
"Yes, I have accumulated fat, but I'm healthy," he said. "I don't have sugar, cholesterol, triglycerides, diabetes or high blood pressure. My heart works perfectly fine."
Uribe deals with his weight loss. He doesn't want a gastric bypass. He's on the Zone diet -- a moderate program in carbs, protein and fat. No more rice and beans! Always by Uribe's side, his mother, Ofelia Uribe, prepares five meals a day.
"What do you want for your son?" Quinones asked.
"That he can get up and walk," a hopeful Ofelia Uribe said.
