I saw this article in the Trib this morning, but here it is on CNN as well. Half-ton man works toward gastric surgery

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. Sept. 20, 2004 — Patrick Deuel is on a diet. He’s down to about 700 pounds now. He hopes to lose 400 more.

When he entered the hospital in Sioux Falls, he weighed more than half a ton a disaster Deuel blames on bad genes and his early years in the restaurant business.

He kept eating until he hit 1,072, a weight that could only be determined when he was put on a scale used to weigh trucks loaded with grain. To get him to the scale, a wall had to be knocked out of his home in Valentine, Neb.

Okay, I understand the genetics and food access being a cause of weight gain. But come on, 1,072 pounds? At like 500 pounds don’t you start to think about slowing down on the food? Hell, I’d be thinking about it at 350 pounds.

He’s on a 1200 calorie a day diet, and he’s lost weight faster than the doctors thought he would. While I think he let himself go WAY to far, you have to admire him for attitude.

“So long as people hear what I have to say,” Deuel says, “as long as I am succeeding in getting my message out, it doesn’t bother me.”

Bedridden since last fall, he thought about trying to keep his identity private. But he figured he could do more good by talking about obesity, its stigma and the lack of financial and medical resources available for people his size.

One thing I have to disagree with this. This is more than obesity as in “the obesity epidemic gripping the US.” This is OBESITY on a scale so large I can only say it bolded and in caps. By confusing the two, he really diminishes the obesity problem that the US is having.