A 35-YEAR-OLD man who lost 500 pounds (226.8 kg) must now wear compression garments to stabilize all his excess skin and says he is still trapped inside his “own fat suit.”

    Thomas Towle III, from Gardiner, Maine, in the U.S., admits he suffered an addiction to eating and only took stock when his doctor told him he faced an early death if he did not lose weight.

    After being a big child, he became even more overweight when he was a teenager and Towle was forced to drop out of high school when he became too embarrassed of his size, reports the Press Herald.

    “I did an amazing job, I think, of putting a great face on, letting no one know how much being that heavy bothered me,” he said. At one point he weighed almost 800 pounds.

    “I made jokes at myself to survive. If someone was making fun of me, I made fun of myself harder. That way your jokes didn’t hurt me, or at least you thought they didn’t hurt me. Inside, it was a totally different story. It crushed me inside.”

    Towle tried several diets which all worked but as soon as he pulled back, he put the weight on again.

    He eventually began to lose weight when he got a job at McDonald’s and he left the house and moved around more.

    He said that although he suffered pain in his joints from the excess weight they supported, he was able to sit down on a stool and serve customers.

    (SD-Agencies)