Yo-yo life of world’s fattest man
Once the world’s fattest man, Paul set out to change – but a failed relationship, a shoplifting charge and ballooning weight are pulling him down again
SECURITY at the supermarket had been told to watch out for the man in the mobility scooter. He’d been caught on camera loading his basket with items and then leaving without paying. So when he pulled the stunt again, they were waiting for him, nabbing him with a stash of aftershave, perfume, phone chargers, a Star Wars figurine and earphones.
The man claimed he’d forgotten to pay for the loot – worth $225 (about R3 150) in total – but security at the shop in Massachusetts, US, weren’t going to let it go.
He was arrested, charged with shoplifting and if found guilty he could face up to a year in jail or a $1 500 (R21 000) fine.
Not a particularly newsworthy event, you may be thinking – until the story unravels of the man arrested that day.
His name is Paul Mason. In 2010 he was dubbed the world’s fattest man but subsequent surgery has helped him drastically lose weight and seemingly get his life back on track.
Paul had even fallen in love with an American woman and moved from his native Ipswich, England, to the US to be with her. They got engaged. She helped keep his weight-loss regime on track and was also by his side when he had surgery to remove 25kg of excess skin.
But then their relationship fell apart – and Paul isn’t coping. He’s eating practically 24/7 and his weight is ballooning. He wants to go back to the UK to have surgery to correct a herniated stomach staple caused by overeating, and he’s also desperate for a double-knee replacement – all on the National Health Service, Britain’s free healthcare programme. Friends of Paul’s fear he’s “gone into freefall”.
Now a new documentary, The World’s Fattest Man: The American Adventure, is in the works. “It’s been a rocky few years for Paul,” says David Pounds, the doccie’s producer. “He’s put on weight as he copes with his relationship breakdown and depression. His food addiction really has got hold of him. Now he’s been accused of shoplifting.”
But people in Ipswich aren’t as sympathetic. “To leave the country and come back just because we have a free NHS is wrong,” one resident says. “He should be looking not just at the weight but at how he thinks and feels so he can cope better when he’s in a bad way.”
But David says Paul (54) has no other option. “He had safety nets in the past but now there’s nothing to catch him. He doesn’t know where else to turn. The cost is just too high in the US.”
PAUL wasn’t always overweight. He started piling it on only after his dad, Roy, a former military policeman, died soon after Paul finished high school. A failed love affair with a woman 15 years his senior followed and he “ate to fill the crack in my heart”.
“It’s like alcohol to an alcoholic. I’d spend about £30 (then about R320) a week on chocolate,” he says in the 2011 documentary Britain’s Fattest Man.
By 2002 he weighed 356kg and his
organs were suffering under the burden. Once he had to be taken to hospital but was so huge a 1,6m-tall window in his home had to be removed so a forklift truck could extract him from the house.
When his mother died in 2009, his weight climbed to 381kg. He was so big he couldn’t even leave his home to attend her funeral.
Paul was effectively an invalid. A team of seven NHS carers visited him three times a day to cook and clean for him. At that point he was consuming about 84 000 kilojoules a day – around 10 times the amount the average man needs.
A typical breakfast consisted of four sausages, four eggs, two pieces of fried bread and a pile of hash browns. At 10.30am he’d snack on sausage rolls and pastries and for lunch he’d wolf down four portions of fish and chips and two kebabs.
“At night I’d shovel down roast dinners, curries, chips and pizza,” he said. He’d also snack on 30 to 40 chocolate bars and about 72 packets of chips during the day.
Keeping him clean was an unenviable operation. Carers had to wipe deep down between enormous rolls of flesh to try to stop bed sores and blisters from forming. Unable to go to the loo, he was fitted with pads to contain his considerable waste.
By 2010 he was costing the British taxpayer £100 000 (then about R1,1 million) a year in housing, food and medical expenses. At his heaviest Paul tipped the scale at 454kg (YOU, 27 January 2011).
He finally had gastric bypass surgery and lost 127kg – but at 253kg was still considerably overweight.
He was miserable and said he was going to sue the NHS because the organisation had failed to help him control his addiction to food. “I’m seeking compensation for the suffering and lost years.”
Not surprisingly, many British citizens were outraged. “I’m a single parent through no fault of my own with a disabled child and I can’t get this kind of money for my son,” one woman wrote to a newspaper.
Yet Paul was adamant that his size wasn’t his fault. “The NHS should’ve helped so I didn’t put on all that weight in the first place,” he insisted.
ONE person was rather taken with Paul’s plight. American Rebecca Mountain, a vegetarian and manufacturing boss, watched Britain’s Fattest Man and was moved by it. She contacted him in 2013 and the following year he moved to the US to be with her.
They became engaged and in 2015 Paul had his mounds of excess flesh removed in a nine-hour procedure in New York – after four plastic surgeons agreed to do the $38 000 (R546 000) operation for free.
One of the doctors, Jennifer Capla, who specialises in loose-skin removal, told The New York Times she’d never operated on anyone whose weight loss was so extreme.
At that point Paul had lost a total of 298kg and seemed to be doing well. But his relationship was suffering.
“Paul isn’t an easy man to live with,” David Pounds says. “He always needs encouragement and support. I think Rebecca felt the relationship lost balance. He stopped doing things around the house and she’s quite a focused woman and those things would irritate her. He’d say she wasn’t giving him the emotional support he needed. They grew apart.”
With Rebecca gone, Paul quickly sank back into his old habits. He’s put on more than 100kg, stays in bed most of the time and has moved his cooker and fridge into his bedroom. “He pretty much eats throughout the night,” David says. “He’s not hungry. He’s eating because he’s depressed and addicted. It’s a vicious cycle.”
Paul had to have two toes removed earlier this year due to arthritis and is reportedly on painkillers and medication for various disorders, including diabetes, cellulitis and anaemia. “Our film shows how dramatic it is for Paul to just get around. It’s really not easy,” David says.
“But Paul is a survivor. When he wants to, he can lose the weight dramatically. He just needs the right focus and right people around him.”