Kenneth Brumley became world-famous as the 'half-ton dad' after appearing in the Channel 4 documentary of the same name, but his present state is a complete mystery
One of the heaviest people to have ever lived once weighed a whopping 73st – so big that he couldn't walk or wash himself
Kenneth Brumley became famous after appearing in Channel 4 documentary Half-Ton Dad, which has recently resurfaced on YouTube.
In the show, firefighters entered the home of the then-40-year-old and found him lying on the floor, his bed long having collapsed under the sheer weight of his body.
He was unable to get up or move much more than his head and arms, and he hadn't been able to wash himself in four years.
The size of a minivan, the dad-of-four could not fit through any of the door frames in his Texas home. As a result, emergency service teams had to knock through a wall into the garage in order to stretcher him to a nearby hospital.
With even the slightest wrong move likely to trigger a heart attack, freeing him resembled a massive military operation, with one
But, under round-the-clock medical care, Kenneth began the long and painful process of trying to reverse the effects of decades of binge eating which saw him consume around 30,000 calories on a daily basis.
That's approximately the amount an average person gets through in a fortnight
A move from Texas to California shortly afterwards saw his addiction worsen as he fell in with various street gangs.
"We were always eating fast food, like chilli cheese fries for breakfast," he said, admitting to often wolfing down three hamburgers and two litres of soda in one sitting.
"It was always junk, no home cooking, and a lot of beer - I was getting through a case of malt a day."
Needing to buy bigger trousers every two weeks, Kenneth added that he finally decided to turn his back on crime when someone took several shots at him while he was in the car with one of his children.
But he couldn't turn his back on food and, by that point, had become "a prisoner in my own body".
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Kenneth was so heavy the bed he slept on broke under his weight
He added, "I would just sit in bed, watch TV and eat - day after day, nothing else.
I let this get out of hand and if i had the chance to go back I'd never do it again."
Seemingly good to his word, he stuck to the strict diet imposed by doctors and lost a whopping 11st in a matter of weeks, which was followed by surgery to remove large "fat folds" from his legs and stomach.
H was then given a gastric bypass and after 365 days in hospital was allowed to go back home in a wheelchair to continue working on standing unaided again - the first time he'd been able to do so in more than 15 years
He was finally able to stand for the first time in more than a decade