Man slims down after surgery - to half a ton

PATRICK DEUEL presses his chest with his fingertips, smiles mischievously and makes an announcement worthy of a banner headline: he can feel his ribs.

One year ago, the Nebraska man was taken to hospital an ambulance with extra-wide doors and a ramp-and-winch system, after a hole had been cut in a wall because he couldn’t fit through the wall.

Mr Deuel weighed 1,072 pounds (76 stone). He hadn’t left his bedroom in seven months. He couldn’t sit up or roll over.

If measured vertically, his waist would have been the height of Yao Ming, the 7ft 6in basketball star. He had heart trouble and diabetes and needed oxygen.

Twelve months after gastric bypass surgery, Deuel is still fat, but he is less than half the man he used to be and that, his doctor says, is amazing progress.

“I’m used to looking in the mirror and seeing the Michelin man,” says Mr Deuel. “All of a sudden... I look a little more like a human being and I say, ‘Ooooh, my God, where did HE come from?’”

Feeling his ribs is all well and good, but the main thrill is the magic number on the scale: 499 pounds (35 stone) - he hasn’t been south of 500 in two decades. “Life,” he says, “is infinitely better.”

By the time the special ambulance pulled into his driveway, Mr Deuel had been a prisoner of his weight for years. He couldn’t work, or, for a time, visit his mother.

In the year since his surgery, Mr Deuel, age 43, has talked openly about his obesity.

He has made money appearing in a British documentary and on German TV magazine shows.

He shows his childhood photos: the kindergartener in cap and gown, weighing over six stone.

The 13-year-old, holding a confirmation cake weighing 19 stone.

Neither of his parents is fat. His mother, Betty, said doctors offered little guidance beyond suggesting nonfat milk.

Mr Deuel’s mother worked in a health-food store and says she prepared healthy meals and they tried the Weight Watcher’s diet, but it didn’t help much. She knew how abnormal the situation was, but: “There’s a point where you say, ‘Am I nagging so much where I’m making things worse?’ I did believe you can overdo it,” she explains. “I had someone ask me one day, ‘Couldn’t he just eat less?’ Well, he did.”

Mr Deuel became a fast-food junkie hooked on pizza, chips, beef jerky, chilli dogs and cheese blintzes. Even now, his face brightens when he mentions his favourite foods.

While those days are over, he hasn’t exactly adopted an aesthetic life. He exercises with bar bells and weights, but still smokes, saying he can’t kick two bad habits at once. And he defiantly refuses to consider any foods taboo. “If you have a craving and don’t take care of it, it’s going to grow and grow and grow and it’s going to make you do something stupid - binge,” he says.