Man loses 23 stone on South Dakota diet

An American, who once weighed more than half a ton, has lost 23 stone in hospital, with a goal of losing another 32 stone.

Patrick Deuel, 42, weighed more than 76 stone when he was admitted to hospital in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, eight weeks ago. Deuel, who is just under six feet tall, is on a 1,200 calorie-a-day diet.

He wants to lose at least another 450 pounds or more in the next year and a half to two years. He is being supervised by a team of eight doctors.

“If we hadn’t got him here, he’d be dead now,” said hospital doctor Fred Harris.

Deuel said he knew he had to act. The former restaurant manager has been bedridden since last autumn and had not been out of his home for seven years.

Heart failure, thyroid problems, diabetes, pulmonary hypertension and arthritis – the physical effects of obesity – were robbing him of life. Deuel needed an oxygen machine to breathe and help just to roll over in bed.

High-fat, high-calorie foods and sedentary lifestyles play a big role in obesity. But for Deuel, who has battled his weight all his life, genetics is partly to blame. He weighed about 90 pounds in kindergarten and more than 250 pounds in junior school.

A group known as the League of Human Dignity helped arrange for Deuel to be driven to a local livestock scale, where he could be weighed.

According to the Guinness World Records, the record for heaviest man in the world is 1,397 pounds, held by Jon Brower Minnoch of Washington state, who died in 1983.