Taming The Beast

Manuel Uribe, who once weighed a half ton but has slimmed down to about 700 pounds celebrates his 43rd birthday on Wednesday with a simple wish for the coming year: to be able to stand on his own two feet to get married.

Interviewed at his home in northern Mexico, where he can still do little more than sit up on a bed, Uribe said more than two years of steady dieting have helped him drop about 550 pounds from his Guinness record weight of 1,235 pounds.

He hopes Guinness representatives will confirm in July that he holds a second title: The world's greatest loser of weight.

Uribe said he met Solis, a 38-year-old hairdresser, four years ago. They have been together for the last two. "We are a couple," Uribe said. "We have sex, and in the eyes of God we are already married."

Solis said her family initially opposed the match with Uribe, because her first husband, who was also obese, died of respiratory failure. "They were worried about me being involved with another fat man, because they thought another husband would die on me," she said.