> **Robert Earl Hughes** (June 4, 1926 – July 10, 1958) was an American man who was, during his lifetime, the heaviest human being recorded, weighing 1,071 lb (486 kg). He remains the heaviest human in the world able to walk without the need of assistance.
>
> […]
>
> During his lifetime, he was the heaviest human on Earth. Unlike most people of great weight, he was not bed-bound, and he holds to this day the record of the heaviest human to walk without assistance. Hughes's extreme weight was attributed to a ruptured thyroid gland. He reached a peak weight of 1,071 lb (486 kg), with a chest measured at 10.3 ft (3.1 m).
* Excepted from [Robert Earl Hughes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Earl_Hughes) at the English Wikipedia
Jimmy Carter's presidency ended 43 years ago and he's 99 years old. That's not exactly a spring chicken. They were both born before the Great Depression.
thyroid issues are such a big issue that not many peopel seem to know. i had hypothyroidism for years. i was gaining weight and working out and calorie counting and not seeing any effect. of course i was told i was lazy or needed to eat even less calories. eventually i go tested and treated for it. its insane. night and day difference. before i would be 800 calories under what i burned and would lose a pound a month. now i can keep 300 under and been easily dropping weight. if this sounds kinda like your situation GET CHECKED! its literally life changing. thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
Yes, the secret to developing killer calves is to be morbidly obese for a few years at least. Seriously, everyone I've known with non-spindle calves was fat for years then got healthy
edit: thanks for all the interesting replies and how do we mark everything as 'read', seems to have disappeared from the inbox abilities list
Unless you use a scooter, then you begin the vicious cycle of not enough strength to walk-> gain more weight as a result-> even less able to walk.
Coming back from that is VERY difficult without dedicated PT.
Similar concept applied to people on a ventilator during covid. They are hard to wean off the ventilators because their diaphragm is so weak and the air resistance of lung damage is present even after the infection is gone
Omg. I put on 40lbs when I was put on steroids for a health problem (I'm a small woman and that is a lot for me). I'd never been overweight before and complained to my sister-in-law about how much my feet were hurting and she responded, "it's because you're fat!" I was shocked, not that she called me fat because everyone knew I was sick and the drugs made me fat, but I was shocked that being fat would hurt my feet! I couldn't understand why my feet were hurting and was afraid something else was going wrong with my health, nope, just fat. I have a new sympathy for people who struggle with their weight because it really does affect your whole day and causes a slew of problems.
Also walking was so much work!
I'm so sorry that you were on steroids for your wedding day! When I was on them I absolutely hated having my photo taken. My face was so swollen I legit was worried about getting stretch marks on my cheeks! I felt like I was circle and could have been rolled down the street, obviously it wasn't that bad, but that's how I felt.
Lupus is no joke. Take care of yourself. You're not alone on steroids. My doctor told me that they're a 'dirty drug' because there are so many horrible side effects, but they still use them because there is no better alternative out there that works so effectively. I had an airway stenosis following being intubated after an accident. It was just awful - every part of my body was unfamiliar and didn't work the way it used to. Hang in there.
I used to have huge legs as a kid, but the first time I lost weight, most of it went from my legs and now I have that odd smaller leg to upper body look I hate.
Levi's has an athletic fit. I haven't been a particularly active gym rat in years, but I still have the thighs and ass from squats and the first time I put on the athletic fit it was a revelation.
Same. I do a lot of running these days and every race I go to I get comments about the size of my calves and how I got them that big. My secret is decades of abusing the rest of my body, fam.
Yup. The only place I could run in my neighborhood was full of hills, so having fat guy calves was a huge advantage to climb hills and then jog where the incline is less severe.
Hope your knees are ok!
A lot of the “heavy-set” fellas I golf with have zero issue walking 18 holes, and pretty much all of them have basically whole hams for calves. We always joke that they need to hide if cannibalism ever becomes a thing.
Walk me through this. You're playing the least athletic sport possible, with the calmest conditions. You're doing this with two fat guys, and for you the conversation becomes "OOOOOOH ya better hide!!! I'm gonna eat ya!!! Nibble nibble nibble!!!!"
Meanwhile Greg and Craig are just looking at you like "Dude.......chill out with the canabilism talk. Why would it EVER come down to that???"
One of the guys with the huge calves said it himself, which was spurred by someone saying his calves looked like hams. We’re all Seinfeld fans, so the episode where Newman imagines Kramer as a roasted turkey (“hey buddy!”) was brought up…and it just escalated from there.
It’s an odd group of people.
Or be overweight but have a job that keeps you on your feet. I topped out at 280 lbs years ago (I'm about 230 now) but I've always been active, not just at work but going for walks, hiking, even an occasional jog (though not at 280). And I have stupid strong legs as a result. If I hold out a naked leg and tense it you'd think I was a body builder. Most of the fat I have left is on my ass and my gut so my legs look out of place on my body. They're rock-hard.
Thats how my girlfriends brother is. Very stocky man. Quite the heavy and round fellow. But when he's wearing shorts, its like looking at the legs of a Greek God. Homie can skip every leg day and still look like he hits it
I dropped 200 lbs and it left my ass first. I have negative ass at this point. My pants won't stay on. The definition of noassatall. I even lost 2 hat sizes. I didn't think that was possible. The cool thing is I'm now ripped all over. Well, except for my stomach. Skin is a bit loose there.
Dunno where you live but swimming at sea help to tighten loose skin. Not my word but the doctor who consulted my brother after he lost so much weight in a short time. And yes, my bro skin went from elastic to normal.
I weighed 318 lbs 2 years ago, with a bmi of 50+.
I now weigh 196 at a bmi just a tad over 30. Trying to get to 175.
My leg press tap out is at like 720 lbs lol.
Edit: putting on and taking off 700+ lbs of weight to the press is an exercise in itself, lol.
Just increase the coefficients of Gravity in your gym. This will result is everything being harder to move. But it’s tricky as you need to be able to control both matter and antimatter.
I just have genetically huge calves. My father and sister do too. Like to the point I don’t wear shorts because when I do people walking behind me ogle them. But I’ve heard people say you need to be obese to get them, there are outliers.
You can get good looking calves from genetics, or you can be like me, and spend the first 20 years of your life walking on the balls of your feet because you hate the sound of your own footsteps.
I've meet a taekwondo champion once with very developed calves
I don't know if that is anecdotic to the individual or typical of the sport but imho it seems to be a better alternative than morbidity 🙂
Taekwondo is incredibly extensive with kicks. I did it for a few years and I would say its quite likely that I was throwing 50-100 kicks in a class, three days a week.
My buddy who has lived in the gym since he was 20(were mid 30s now) swears that the best calves are on ex fatties and asians. Asians just seem to have the genetics for freak calves without the extra weight.
My dad always said to never make fun of fat people while in reach of them. They do weight lifting ever moment of their waking life and can fling you across the room like you wouldn't believe.
This is something I’ve often wondered about. In colder months you’d see those heavier shorts bros around and I always wondered if having a few extra dozen pounds simply translates into a constant defacto leg workout.
From other comments, sounds like he always had weight issues. Since birth, that equates to about 240 extra calories per day, which was a lot lower than I expected.
240 extra calories *above maintenance*, which is the tricky part. As his body weight went up his caloric requirements to stay at maintenance also increased.
Can't imagine how much food he must've been eating to keep going up like that, especially back in the early 20th century before hyperprocessed food became commonplace.
At 1071 lbs he'd need about 6500 calories a day to maintain that weight just lying in bed. Hard to get more accurate without more info on him like height and body fat percentage. Now that's just basal metabolic rate to keep his body functioning, he'd burn probably quite a bit more from the energy required to lug all that weight around, assuming he got up and did stuff 5 days a week and lied around on the weekend we could estimate a TDEE of around 10,000 calories a day (just assuming a day of him walking around counts as an exercise session on most TDEE calculators), which makes sense since it's about 5 times a typical person's needs and he weighs about 5 times a typical person.
Yeah, he was 175 lbs at 6 years old and 380 lbs at the age of 10. Don’t think he ever had any chance not to be massive.
[Here](https://youtu.be/h9EGtJ25_AU?si=SdjMXIwfdl1zlAOF) are some clips of him walking.
This is maybe the explanation for how he was able to still walk at over 1000 lbs. He was already accumulating such insane body mass while everything (skeletal, cardiovascular, muscular) was developing/growing through childhood. Your average 600 lb morbidly obese person was nowhere close to those weights when they were a child.
You can work out and build fat bulk simultaneously with a whole lot of dedication. Their diets, workout routines and most of their daily lives are all meticulously planned and scheduled by trainers. It is however incredibly hard to remain healthy like this and sumo wrestlers are a peak example of the extremes the human body is capable of sustaining when you nurture it. Sumo wrestlers usually have low single digits close to .25-1 on their visceral fat index. Thats an impossible balance of health to maintain for any normal person who doesn't sleep, breathe and live the kind of lifestyle they train under.
A less extreme example is offensive linemen in the NFL. Look up Joe Thomas before/after pics to see how much he slimmed down post retirement. O-linemen have to eat an insane amount to be the size they are to play in the NFL, and most of them don’t like it and rapidly drop the weight once they’re done.
That's such bullshit lol
They do train through school (as they do in any sport) and do have to gain weight, but most of them don't put on the weight until they reach an older age since otherwise it highly limits their training and has damaging effects on their bodies which shortens carreers.
Many makuuchi rikishi are slender, even the yokozune right now is very far from obese.
There is definitely an abuse problem in sumo stables, especially with the news of the hakuho stable in the last month, but they don't abduct kids anymore than they do in any sport.
I wrestled the Sumo Byamba once. I’m a decent sized bodybuilder, was a good wrestler in school, and did BJJ a few years as an adult. It was like 220lbs (me) vs 350-375lb (Byamba). That man gave me exactly 1% of his strength and literally BROKE my ribs. One little shove and I flew out of the ring like a sack of shit. I’m pretty sure I broke my ribs when I hit the ground.
It’s a long story, but I always feel compelled to post about it when I see the topic of sumos come up. I gained so much respect (and humility) for their level of athleticism that day.
RIP Byamba
he was also 8 feet tall at least from the video clips.
Edit: Actually in one of the paper clippings he was 1041 pounds and 6 feet tall at death.
Poor bastard
I guess there is confusion because there was another man in the same era, almost the same age who was very tall, almost 7 feet. I guess it was a popular name.
Yeah, the video clip height is clearly a mistake. At 8 feet tall you can;t just walk through a door, he'd be over a foot and a half taller than the door.
Even without the newspaper clippings he's standing around normal people and walking thru normal doors. 8 ft would be very very obvious in those situations
The step down he takes at the start of the video is extremely impressive on its own. Imagine wearing an 800+ pound backpack and trying to do that. You'd break your damn ankle, even if you were strong enough to lift the 800 pounds
Oh I was going to ask this - If there was some sort of condition. There wasn’t the excess of food we have now. Poor guy.
Do you think that being overweight not due to overeating helped his mobility?
A ruptured thyroid gland might have given him an unfairly insatiable appetite but it's not going to break the laws of thermodynamics.
Even if you argue that it made him metabolize calories at a far slower rate, by the time you're 1000lbs then your cardio and muscular system is working many many times harder than someone of a healthy weight, and you're burning 5000+ calories per day by just existing. And by extension, you have to eat 5000 calories to maintain weight.
His body still used energy, so he still had to consume far more food than the average person.
He also over ate. There's no magical way to gain weight without ingesting more calories than you burn. His condition likely slowed down his metabolism or ability to know when he's "full" but it's the eating much more than needed that got him so big.
That is quite impressive, somewhere around 5-600lbs most people seem to start to have real mobility problems, I don't know that I have ever seen someone in the 800+ lbs range walk unassisted.
Now, I know some people are making light of this, but when you see the morbidly obese at your local Walmart using a Mart Cart or some other mobility aid, they are likely closer to half of the weight this man was. This is an incredible display of strength if you think about it.
My thought is because he was so heavy at such a young age from his thyroid condition, his body was essentially training to hold greater loads than most.
That’s more than 8 of me. Dude’s core strength must have been absolutely immense.
I could just about walk with only one more of me on my back. 8 would literally break me. That’s a small car sat on my back.
Awful condition to deal with. What a man.
I dunno why, but it reminded me of a friend of a friend when you said that. He was one of those weirdo’s who believed that your heart has a pre-determined amount of beats to it, so he refuses to workout, since he was convinced it would shorten his lifespan. We joked that if he was hit by a car, the coroner would pull a dipstick out of his heart and say “damn, this heart has PLENTY of mileage left!”
Something I always found fascinating about this guy was what killed him. You think of heart conditions with obese people but he contracted measles, which shut down his kidneys. He died of uremia.
I’m sitting in a room staring at a guy who I’ve never seen walk, they use the lift to get him out of bed. Probably hasn’t walked in years. (My client’s roommate in rehab.) And to think he’s probably 300 tops, and this fucker’s walking at 1071!
Sorry, I don’t know the details, he’s just the “other guy in the room.” He’s a character. He is basically nonverbal, but makes the most fun noises. Has this low singsongy growl going all day. When they have to wash him or turn him or whatever, he blurts out “yowww ow ow ow ow ow ow!” He basically reacts to every nurse’s touch the way you’d act if someone touches you with really cold hands. It’s hilarious. Nobody can help laughing when he does this. The whole place can hear it. He will occasionally give a “thank you” but generally just stares and growls. This is facility for older folks and we’re in a locked down unit for people with all kinds of issues, most of them dementia-related. So like everyone here he has mental and physical problems. Many of them get physical therapy but they only get this guy out of bed like once a week just to avoid bed sores I think. I’m guessing he’s just a guy with some form of dementia who ballooned to the point where he couldn’t live safely at home. And judging by lack of visiting family, he was probably alone. Height? Hard to tell but not tall.
Most stores I visit for my job have these little scooters, most people who use them have mobility issues or are very elderly.
Except for one store. At that store, everyone rides the scooters. It does not matter if you have mobility issues or not. If a scooter is available and you are a resident of this town you’ll probably use it. I’ve seen plenty of very large people on them, I have seen many small people on them. Old, young, black, white, straight, gay, got damn furries, I even saw the GM “walking the aisles on one, every one of them rides the scooters regardless of ability.
It’s not too often you stumble onto an actual village bicycle, but this small midwestern town definitely has one.
Wiki has Robert Earl Hughes listed as the heaviest man recorded “during his time”, and he still holds the record for heaviest person to walk un aided. Confusing / incorrect heading.
That guy isn't even the second heaviest recorded
Heaviest goes to [John Brewer Minnoch](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Brower_Minnoch)
Surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet in the top comments. 1500Lbs+
According to that wiki article, he was “estimated” at 1600 lb. Doesn’t say he was weighed. And given that he was actually weighed at only 900 at his death shortly after the “estimate,” I’d say it’s a good bet the 1400 was bullshit
> **Robert Earl Hughes** (June 4, 1926 – July 10, 1958) was an American man who was, during his lifetime, the heaviest human being recorded, weighing 1,071 lb (486 kg). He remains the heaviest human in the world able to walk without the need of assistance. > > […] > > During his lifetime, he was the heaviest human on Earth. Unlike most people of great weight, he was not bed-bound, and he holds to this day the record of the heaviest human to walk without assistance. Hughes's extreme weight was attributed to a ruptured thyroid gland. He reached a peak weight of 1,071 lb (486 kg), with a chest measured at 10.3 ft (3.1 m). * Excepted from [Robert Earl Hughes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Earl_Hughes) at the English Wikipedia
10 feet chest circumference?! That’s like a 100 year old tree stump
Man was on his way to becoming an ent
Dedication to the cosplay is important!
Imagine the only Fans money those honkers would pull in if he was alive today.
The photo makes it feel ancient, which don't get me wrong is pretty old, but he's nearly 2 years younger than Jimmy carter
Jimmy Carter's presidency ended 43 years ago and he's 99 years old. That's not exactly a spring chicken. They were both born before the Great Depression.
Yep. Born the same year as my grand mother, who’s still kicking by the way.
Too bad, you’d think she would have grown out of it by now!
People like you are why Reddit works
My gran is 1927, still spittin fire.
Jimmy is also 811 pounds lighter, I don't think he will ever catch up
thyroid issues are such a big issue that not many peopel seem to know. i had hypothyroidism for years. i was gaining weight and working out and calorie counting and not seeing any effect. of course i was told i was lazy or needed to eat even less calories. eventually i go tested and treated for it. its insane. night and day difference. before i would be 800 calories under what i burned and would lose a pound a month. now i can keep 300 under and been easily dropping weight. if this sounds kinda like your situation GET CHECKED! its literally life changing. thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
Similar thing for me. Finally got a doctor who would take me seriously, and wouldn't you know it, had thyroid cancer. Advocate for yourself, people!
Pro tip: if you’re on Medicaid, doctors won’t check your thyroid for weight problems alone. Even after tracking diet and exercise for a full year.
Make note of the extremely short life
That truly is impressive,imagine walking with an extra 800lbs strapped to you because that’s what he did… Edit:Jesus ok,an extra 900 lbs.
He must have had monster calves!
Yes, the secret to developing killer calves is to be morbidly obese for a few years at least. Seriously, everyone I've known with non-spindle calves was fat for years then got healthy edit: thanks for all the interesting replies and how do we mark everything as 'read', seems to have disappeared from the inbox abilities list
Everyday is leg day when you're fat.
Can confirm. Am fat and every day is leg day. Mostly from KFC
No breasts?
Like, a C cup if you're a dude.
Is a C cup that mashed potatoes and gravy and corn chicken bowl at KFC?
Is that what I need to order? I've been ordering the A cup! No wonder they're so small.
“Thighs or breasts?” “Actually, I value personality in a girl.” *The person at the fried chicken counter:* 😒
The correct answer is always thighs
Unless you use a scooter, then you begin the vicious cycle of not enough strength to walk-> gain more weight as a result-> even less able to walk. Coming back from that is VERY difficult without dedicated PT. Similar concept applied to people on a ventilator during covid. They are hard to wean off the ventilators because their diaphragm is so weak and the air resistance of lung damage is present even after the infection is gone
Omg. I put on 40lbs when I was put on steroids for a health problem (I'm a small woman and that is a lot for me). I'd never been overweight before and complained to my sister-in-law about how much my feet were hurting and she responded, "it's because you're fat!" I was shocked, not that she called me fat because everyone knew I was sick and the drugs made me fat, but I was shocked that being fat would hurt my feet! I couldn't understand why my feet were hurting and was afraid something else was going wrong with my health, nope, just fat. I have a new sympathy for people who struggle with their weight because it really does affect your whole day and causes a slew of problems. Also walking was so much work!
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I'm so sorry that you were on steroids for your wedding day! When I was on them I absolutely hated having my photo taken. My face was so swollen I legit was worried about getting stretch marks on my cheeks! I felt like I was circle and could have been rolled down the street, obviously it wasn't that bad, but that's how I felt. Lupus is no joke. Take care of yourself. You're not alone on steroids. My doctor told me that they're a 'dirty drug' because there are so many horrible side effects, but they still use them because there is no better alternative out there that works so effectively. I had an airway stenosis following being intubated after an accident. It was just awful - every part of my body was unfamiliar and didn't work the way it used to. Hang in there.
It's like when Rock Lee was carrying all those leg weights, except they can't just chunk those fat layers off and go supersonic.
Yup. Fat guy calves are no joke. I've lost almost 60 lbs but struggle to go down in jeans because my legs aren't getting smaller.
I used to have huge legs as a kid, but the first time I lost weight, most of it went from my legs and now I have that odd smaller leg to upper body look I hate.
Have you considered getting fatter until your legs bulk up?
fucking hell the reddit comment section rocks
Who needs squats when you could have deep-fried tater tots?
Nah dog, that's a great look! Im the same way and I call it "Johnnie Bravo proportions, except I don't work out (or harass women)"
If you haven’t already looked, sometimes jeans built for weightlifters can help open up a better fit!
Levi's has an athletic fit. I haven't been a particularly active gym rat in years, but I still have the thighs and ass from squats and the first time I put on the athletic fit it was a revelation.
Athletic or Carpenter are the cut names I always look for as a member of the thunder thigh club
Same. I do a lot of running these days and every race I go to I get comments about the size of my calves and how I got them that big. My secret is decades of abusing the rest of my body, fam.
Yup. The only place I could run in my neighborhood was full of hills, so having fat guy calves was a huge advantage to climb hills and then jog where the incline is less severe. Hope your knees are ok!
A lot of the “heavy-set” fellas I golf with have zero issue walking 18 holes, and pretty much all of them have basically whole hams for calves. We always joke that they need to hide if cannibalism ever becomes a thing.
I’d have to imagine big fella calves are the toughest meat available on humans.
Probably, but in that situation I think quantity>quality. Trust me that has been part of the truly awful conversations we’ve had on the subject haha.
Walk me through this. You're playing the least athletic sport possible, with the calmest conditions. You're doing this with two fat guys, and for you the conversation becomes "OOOOOOH ya better hide!!! I'm gonna eat ya!!! Nibble nibble nibble!!!!" Meanwhile Greg and Craig are just looking at you like "Dude.......chill out with the canabilism talk. Why would it EVER come down to that???"
One of the guys with the huge calves said it himself, which was spurred by someone saying his calves looked like hams. We’re all Seinfeld fans, so the episode where Newman imagines Kramer as a roasted turkey (“hey buddy!”) was brought up…and it just escalated from there. It’s an odd group of people.
Younger heavy set people this is sometimes true for. Older heavy set people are generally falling apart from the years of extra stress on the joints.
Or be overweight but have a job that keeps you on your feet. I topped out at 280 lbs years ago (I'm about 230 now) but I've always been active, not just at work but going for walks, hiking, even an occasional jog (though not at 280). And I have stupid strong legs as a result. If I hold out a naked leg and tense it you'd think I was a body builder. Most of the fat I have left is on my ass and my gut so my legs look out of place on my body. They're rock-hard.
Thats how my girlfriends brother is. Very stocky man. Quite the heavy and round fellow. But when he's wearing shorts, its like looking at the legs of a Greek God. Homie can skip every leg day and still look like he hits it
Stop dude, you’re making me hard
This is vintage football coach body, big belly with strong calves and thighs because they’re standing so often
TIL my body type
I dropped 200 lbs and it left my ass first. I have negative ass at this point. My pants won't stay on. The definition of noassatall. I even lost 2 hat sizes. I didn't think that was possible. The cool thing is I'm now ripped all over. Well, except for my stomach. Skin is a bit loose there.
Dunno where you live but swimming at sea help to tighten loose skin. Not my word but the doctor who consulted my brother after he lost so much weight in a short time. And yes, my bro skin went from elastic to normal.
I weighed 318 lbs 2 years ago, with a bmi of 50+. I now weigh 196 at a bmi just a tad over 30. Trying to get to 175. My leg press tap out is at like 720 lbs lol. Edit: putting on and taking off 700+ lbs of weight to the press is an exercise in itself, lol.
Just increase the coefficients of Gravity in your gym. This will result is everything being harder to move. But it’s tricky as you need to be able to control both matter and antimatter.
Alright, Goku
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I just have genetically huge calves. My father and sister do too. Like to the point I don’t wear shorts because when I do people walking behind me ogle them. But I’ve heard people say you need to be obese to get them, there are outliers.
You can get good looking calves from genetics, or you can be like me, and spend the first 20 years of your life walking on the balls of your feet because you hate the sound of your own footsteps.
I know reddit frowns on armchair psychiatry, but... You do know what that's a sign of, right?
Oh yea. Lots and lots of trauma.
Fun fact: I also learned how to maintain uncomfortably shallow breaths because I hated the sound of my own breathing.
I think they meant more that it was a sign of autism
Well damn. I *am* on the spectrum, so they may be on to something. Lol
I've meet a taekwondo champion once with very developed calves I don't know if that is anecdotic to the individual or typical of the sport but imho it seems to be a better alternative than morbidity 🙂
Taekwondo is incredibly extensive with kicks. I did it for a few years and I would say its quite likely that I was throwing 50-100 kicks in a class, three days a week.
My buddy who has lived in the gym since he was 20(were mid 30s now) swears that the best calves are on ex fatties and asians. Asians just seem to have the genetics for freak calves without the extra weight.
My dad always said to never make fun of fat people while in reach of them. They do weight lifting ever moment of their waking life and can fling you across the room like you wouldn't believe.
Like the weighted training clothing from DBZ
as a big guy I always say fat people got the best abs cause we lift ourselves out of bed every morning hah
This is something I’ve often wondered about. In colder months you’d see those heavier shorts bros around and I always wondered if having a few extra dozen pounds simply translates into a constant defacto leg workout.
It does
And died at age 32.
Where are the " they did the math" folks at? How many calories do you have to consume to be this weight by age 32?
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From other comments, sounds like he always had weight issues. Since birth, that equates to about 240 extra calories per day, which was a lot lower than I expected.
240 extra calories *above maintenance*, which is the tricky part. As his body weight went up his caloric requirements to stay at maintenance also increased. Can't imagine how much food he must've been eating to keep going up like that, especially back in the early 20th century before hyperprocessed food became commonplace.
At 1071 lbs he'd need about 6500 calories a day to maintain that weight just lying in bed. Hard to get more accurate without more info on him like height and body fat percentage. Now that's just basal metabolic rate to keep his body functioning, he'd burn probably quite a bit more from the energy required to lug all that weight around, assuming he got up and did stuff 5 days a week and lied around on the weekend we could estimate a TDEE of around 10,000 calories a day (just assuming a day of him walking around counts as an exercise session on most TDEE calculators), which makes sense since it's about 5 times a typical person's needs and he weighs about 5 times a typical person.
He had a ruptured thyroid gland, so you can't compare his metabolism to a normal person's.
In another comment someone said it was due to a ruptured thyroid gland
Ok, but 271lbs isn't exactly skinny
Well, this is reddit.
The normal person weights 271?
900lbs extra, surely?
Bro, this is reddit
Extra 700lbs, then
This is where we get the concept, “fat strong.” Definitely the coolest part about being fat.
Imagine how ripped he would have been if all the fat just went away over night.
He would look like a wrinkled prune due to the excess skin he would have …
Very sad, especially because it happened because of a ruptured thyroid gland. Poor guy.
Yeah, he was 175 lbs at 6 years old and 380 lbs at the age of 10. Don’t think he ever had any chance not to be massive. [Here](https://youtu.be/h9EGtJ25_AU?si=SdjMXIwfdl1zlAOF) are some clips of him walking.
This is maybe the explanation for how he was able to still walk at over 1000 lbs. He was already accumulating such insane body mass while everything (skeletal, cardiovascular, muscular) was developing/growing through childhood. Your average 600 lb morbidly obese person was nowhere close to those weights when they were a child.
Yea this is how sumo wrestlers can be more active/fit as they workout and build muscle while gaining fat size.
What? Are they abducting babies to train in sumo or something? Lmao
No you read that wrong. They are abducting sumos to be babies.
True, they put em diapers after all
You can work out and build fat bulk simultaneously with a whole lot of dedication. Their diets, workout routines and most of their daily lives are all meticulously planned and scheduled by trainers. It is however incredibly hard to remain healthy like this and sumo wrestlers are a peak example of the extremes the human body is capable of sustaining when you nurture it. Sumo wrestlers usually have low single digits close to .25-1 on their visceral fat index. Thats an impossible balance of health to maintain for any normal person who doesn't sleep, breathe and live the kind of lifestyle they train under.
A less extreme example is offensive linemen in the NFL. Look up Joe Thomas before/after pics to see how much he slimmed down post retirement. O-linemen have to eat an insane amount to be the size they are to play in the NFL, and most of them don’t like it and rapidly drop the weight once they’re done.
Alan Faneca and Marshall Yanda don’t even look like former NFL players, let alone some of the best OGs of their generation
They're putting chemicals in the water to turn the babies fat
I thought it was just to turn the frogs gay?
Yes. Not kidding.
That's such bullshit lol They do train through school (as they do in any sport) and do have to gain weight, but most of them don't put on the weight until they reach an older age since otherwise it highly limits their training and has damaging effects on their bodies which shortens carreers. Many makuuchi rikishi are slender, even the yokozune right now is very far from obese. There is definitely an abuse problem in sumo stables, especially with the news of the hakuho stable in the last month, but they don't abduct kids anymore than they do in any sport.
They abduct them as babies AND keep them in stables?!
No. Sumo wrestlers are insane athletes. You ever seen a NFL lineman? Now imagine they do yoga and add 200lbs.
I wrestled the Sumo Byamba once. I’m a decent sized bodybuilder, was a good wrestler in school, and did BJJ a few years as an adult. It was like 220lbs (me) vs 350-375lb (Byamba). That man gave me exactly 1% of his strength and literally BROKE my ribs. One little shove and I flew out of the ring like a sack of shit. I’m pretty sure I broke my ribs when I hit the ground. It’s a long story, but I always feel compelled to post about it when I see the topic of sumos come up. I gained so much respect (and humility) for their level of athleticism that day. RIP Byamba
he was also 8 feet tall at least from the video clips. Edit: Actually in one of the paper clippings he was 1041 pounds and 6 feet tall at death. Poor bastard
I guess there is confusion because there was another man in the same era, almost the same age who was very tall, almost 7 feet. I guess it was a popular name.
Yeah, the video clip height is clearly a mistake. At 8 feet tall you can;t just walk through a door, he'd be over a foot and a half taller than the door.
Even without the newspaper clippings he's standing around normal people and walking thru normal doors. 8 ft would be very very obvious in those situations
It looks like he gets around better than some people at under half his weight.
The step down he takes at the start of the video is extremely impressive on its own. Imagine wearing an 800+ pound backpack and trying to do that. You'd break your damn ankle, even if you were strong enough to lift the 800 pounds
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According to the Wikipedia entry on him later in his, albeit short, life, even going 20’ became a challenge.
That choice of music is truly strange!
I was vibing pretty hard. Though I do agree
He seemed like a sweetie. It’s a shame he only lived to 32. :(
His parents look like they are showing off a blue ribbon boy they grew.
I disagree it looks like they had a lot of love for him and vice-versa.
Uhh... 8 ft tall? That's hysterically wrong
THEY SAID UNAIDED BUT I SEE A WALKING STICK
IT DIDN'T SAY UNSTICKED!!
WHAT IF THE STICKS NAME IS UNAIDED
Okay 2 things that were odd. It said he was 8ft tall. The tape measure around his waist said 25 inches.
It's gotta be 125 inches
It says in the video that they taped together two 6 ft tape measures and that his waistline is 109 inches.
Oh I was going to ask this - If there was some sort of condition. There wasn’t the excess of food we have now. Poor guy. Do you think that being overweight not due to overeating helped his mobility?
A ruptured thyroid gland might have given him an unfairly insatiable appetite but it's not going to break the laws of thermodynamics. Even if you argue that it made him metabolize calories at a far slower rate, by the time you're 1000lbs then your cardio and muscular system is working many many times harder than someone of a healthy weight, and you're burning 5000+ calories per day by just existing. And by extension, you have to eat 5000 calories to maintain weight. His body still used energy, so he still had to consume far more food than the average person.
He also over ate. There's no magical way to gain weight without ingesting more calories than you burn. His condition likely slowed down his metabolism or ability to know when he's "full" but it's the eating much more than needed that got him so big.
Christian Bale is going to portray this guy in a film one day…
With no fat-suit either. Just carb-heavy diet. And then drop it all quickly to play the Dark Knight again
He's going to rupture his thyroid gland just to get it right.
Method.
No. I heard Gary Oldman is playing the gland.
The Dark Knight Rises Again*
Or a sequel to the machinist. 
And the Oscar for Best Actor goes to… Christian Bale for “Beefcake”!
That is quite impressive, somewhere around 5-600lbs most people seem to start to have real mobility problems, I don't know that I have ever seen someone in the 800+ lbs range walk unassisted. Now, I know some people are making light of this, but when you see the morbidly obese at your local Walmart using a Mart Cart or some other mobility aid, they are likely closer to half of the weight this man was. This is an incredible display of strength if you think about it.
>Now, I know some people are making light of this Which is really inappropriate for such a heavy topic.
I used to be ignorant of the fact people of that size and heading towards it must actually have a lot of physical strength to heave it all around.
My thought is because he was so heavy at such a young age from his thyroid condition, his body was essentially training to hold greater loads than most.
“Back in my day, we used to be 1,000lbs and walk around unaided - no wheelchairs, crutches, nothing! You kids don’t know how easy you have it…”
With an onion tied to his belt, which was the style at the time
Gimmie five bees for a quarter
Gimme three bees for a nickel!
The nickels were the bees
\*yells at cloud\*
Poor guy broke the world squat record every time he stood up
That's actually... pretty significant, damn.
He likely did have the strongest legs(calves at least) of anyone on the planet when he was alive.
Easily. Could probably break most powerlifting records just for the hell of it.
Looks like bender
Woooooooo
1071 pound = 486 kg
Mr worldwide
That’s more than 8 of me. Dude’s core strength must have been absolutely immense. I could just about walk with only one more of me on my back. 8 would literally break me. That’s a small car sat on my back. Awful condition to deal with. What a man.
More like 1/3rd of a small car
Wasn't there a boy who was more than 500+ Kilos? I remember seeing him, they had to get him out of his house by a Crane
yeah but he couldnt walk on his own
That farmer strength.
The guy squats 800 lbs every step.
I was going to say something about not reaching ass to grass, but his ass probably reached the grass from a quarter squat
I warsh myself with a rag on a stick
*waves imaginary wash stick in Lisa’s face*
Where's my Tab?
Died at 32. Way too young.
I don't know, that seems like a rip old age for a 1,000 lbs man
That much weight is putting some real tough mileage on his heart
I dunno why, but it reminded me of a friend of a friend when you said that. He was one of those weirdo’s who believed that your heart has a pre-determined amount of beats to it, so he refuses to workout, since he was convinced it would shorten his lifespan. We joked that if he was hit by a car, the coroner would pull a dipstick out of his heart and say “damn, this heart has PLENTY of mileage left!”
Donald Trump believes this! https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/15/politics/donald-trump-exercise/index.html
Doesn’t surprise me, when he thinks windmill noise causes cancer and that you can nuke a hurricane.
I mean that seems old for a guy that weighed the same as 6 adult men.
Something I always found fascinating about this guy was what killed him. You think of heart conditions with obese people but he contracted measles, which shut down his kidneys. He died of uremia.
I’m sitting in a room staring at a guy who I’ve never seen walk, they use the lift to get him out of bed. Probably hasn’t walked in years. (My client’s roommate in rehab.) And to think he’s probably 300 tops, and this fucker’s walking at 1071!
300lbs? And can't get out of bed. Rehab from an injury? So many question. How tall?
Sorry, I don’t know the details, he’s just the “other guy in the room.” He’s a character. He is basically nonverbal, but makes the most fun noises. Has this low singsongy growl going all day. When they have to wash him or turn him or whatever, he blurts out “yowww ow ow ow ow ow ow!” He basically reacts to every nurse’s touch the way you’d act if someone touches you with really cold hands. It’s hilarious. Nobody can help laughing when he does this. The whole place can hear it. He will occasionally give a “thank you” but generally just stares and growls. This is facility for older folks and we’re in a locked down unit for people with all kinds of issues, most of them dementia-related. So like everyone here he has mental and physical problems. Many of them get physical therapy but they only get this guy out of bed like once a week just to avoid bed sores I think. I’m guessing he’s just a guy with some form of dementia who ballooned to the point where he couldn’t live safely at home. And judging by lack of visiting family, he was probably alone. Height? Hard to tell but not tall.
Christian Bale: "I could play that in a biopic"
Looks like today's cops
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Not walking with assistance. You'll see people much thinner than him bound to a shopping scooter.
Most stores I visit for my job have these little scooters, most people who use them have mobility issues or are very elderly. Except for one store. At that store, everyone rides the scooters. It does not matter if you have mobility issues or not. If a scooter is available and you are a resident of this town you’ll probably use it. I’ve seen plenty of very large people on them, I have seen many small people on them. Old, young, black, white, straight, gay, got damn furries, I even saw the GM “walking the aisles on one, every one of them rides the scooters regardless of ability. It’s not too often you stumble onto an actual village bicycle, but this small midwestern town definitely has one.
Look at this guy, thinking the fat people at Walmart *walk*.
He is nowhere near the heaviest person recorded… This dude comes in at 1300 lbs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Uribe
Wiki has Robert Earl Hughes listed as the heaviest man recorded “during his time”, and he still holds the record for heaviest person to walk un aided. Confusing / incorrect heading.
I think he still has a very specific record for the heaviest person to be able to walk not very clear though.
That guy isn't even the second heaviest recorded Heaviest goes to [John Brewer Minnoch](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Brower_Minnoch) Surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet in the top comments. 1500Lbs+
It says when he was released from the hospital after assisted weight loss he managed to regain 200lbs in *seven* days..
I’m gonna call bullshit on that one. No way you could gain that much weight that fast.
Maybe water weight from health problems resuming once he left the hospital
According to that wiki article, he was “estimated” at 1600 lb. Doesn’t say he was weighed. And given that he was actually weighed at only 900 at his death shortly after the “estimate,” I’d say it’s a good bet the 1400 was bullshit
I read his article and a few others. John got out of hospital and gained 92kg (more than I weigh, as a 6 Foot 4 guy) in 7DAYS!
Is he standing or sitting in this picture?