Man loses 200 pounds, Hopes to lose 770 more Options

[Billy]

Source: CNN

MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) -- Manuel Uribe weighed 1,235 pounds when he made a desperate plea for help on national television in January.

Unable to leave his bed for five years, the 41-year-old mechanic in the northern industrial city of Monterrey longed to move again and get help for the lesions on his legs, which he kept bound together with duct tape to keep the infections from getting worse.

His plea was answered by doctors and nutritionists who prescribed a high-protein diet and suggested gastric bypass surgery, and Uribe has lost some 200 pounds since February.

"I feel better now. I can stretch and move a bit more," Uribe said Monday, flanked by Dr. Barry Sears, creator of the Zone diet, who came to check on his progress.

"Before I would eat 4 eggs, rice, beans and tortillas for breakfast," Uribe said. "Now, I'm learning to eat the right way."

The lesions on his legs have also healed.

Still, Uribe said he has just enough energy to sit up and move the sheet that covers his body.

His goal is to lose 770 more pounds.

Uribe was a chubby kid, weighing more than 250 pounds as an adolescent. Starting in 1992, he said, his weight began ballooning further.

"By then my gut was getting in the way, and I saw a lot of doctors and did a lot of tests but they never found anything wrong," Uribe said.

Sears said it would take three to four years for Uribe to drop to 260 pounds.

"It's going to be a slow process but if he loses another 200 pounds he can become ambulatory," Sears said.

Uribe drew worldwide attention when he appeared on the Televisa television network in January. Two months later, an Italian doctor visited to offer him gastric bypass surgery.

Dr. Carlos Ballesta of the Laparoscopic Center in Barcelona, Spain, also visited Uribe on Monday to discuss possibly performing the procedure.

"The goal is for him to keep losing weight, because if his morbid obesity responds to the diet then there is no need for the surgery," Ballesta said. "We'll intervene if his medical treatment fails."

For the last five years, Uribe has been bedridden, relying on his mother and friends to feed and clean him.

"People think that I can eat a whole cow but it's not just overeating, it's also a hormonal problem," Uribe said. "For now, I'll keep doing the diet and if I get stuck I'll consider the surgery."

I think he should keep the weight and join the circus.

[GOB]

YES! no one understands my desire to do that. lay in his belly fat and make skin angels. slap his thigh and ride the wave into his butt

i bet he would giggle like a little girl if we did that. we could give him treats.