Sex with the world’s fattest man was great — but a loaf of bread split us up
SHE knew he was cheating on her when she spotted a loaf of bread at home. And in that moment, Rebecca Mountain had to accept she would always come second to carbs.
The 46-year-old American soon split with her fiancé Paul Mason — the former world’s fattest man who once tipped the scales at a jaw-dropping 70st.
Brit Paul spent five years in the US — where he fell in love with Rebecca and maintained a “great” sex life, while dropping to 19st. But his weight has since shot back up to 40st and he has moved back to the UK for treatment on the NHS.
Reflecting on their split, Rebecca, who weighs in at just 8st, said: “He was willing to forfeit our friendship for his addiction, to lie in bed and drown those feelings with food.”
At one point Paul, a 58-year-old ex-postie from Ipswich, weighed almost half a ton and was scoffing 20,000 calories a day, wolfing down six portions of chips for lunch and McDonald’s burgers for tea.
But he underwent a life-saving gastric band operation in 2009, which helped him lose 51st, bringing him down to 19st.
Rebecca, from Massachusetts, first heard about Paul in 2013 when watching documentary Eating To Death: The World’s Fattest Man. She sent him a Facebook message and they talked on Skype.
Rebecca said: “He made me feel special. We could talk for hours. He seemed like he was making an effort to get to know me.”
In autumn 2013 she came to the UK to visit and they fell in love, sharing their “wonderful” first kiss in the back of the St John ambulance that ferried him around. And despite Paul being weighed down by bags of excess skin, including gigantic bingo wings, Rebecca says the sex was great.
She said: “I date guys I’m emotionally attracted to and that translates into physical attraction. With Paul we clicked right off the bat. It was really easy to be with him.”
Paul visited Rebecca, who runs a cat furniture business, at Christmas 2013 and it cemented their love. A plastic surgeon in New York gave him skin-reduction surgery for free, and in 2014 he moved to Massachusetts to be with Rebecca. During their first few months, Paul felt he could lose enough weight to live like a normal person.
He was especially proud they could go to the cinema together because he could fit into the seats for the first time in years. The couple were so in love that Rebecca quickly proposed — live on US daytime TV show The View.
Paul then started following Rebecca’s vegetarian diet of oatmeal for breakfast and pasta and salads for main meals. But Rebecca now believes Paul “lost too much weight too soon”.
She said: “I remember asking him, ‘What’s it going to be like to be a thin person again?’ In his optimist way he said, ‘I think it will be good’. But he said he would see pictures of himself as a thin person and he didn’t recognise that person.”
As Paul found stability in his life for the first time in years, there was nothing to distract him from food and his relationship with Rebecca crumbled. The couple split in October 2015. Rebecca said: “We both ended it. At that point I’d seen a lot more about the depths of what he was dealing with.”
Paul moved into a boarding house where he lived alongside drug addicts until Rebecca said he should move back in again in 2017. But his addiction to food drove a wedge between them.
They were both on the paleo diet, where you mimic what cavemen eat — veg and meat. But a solitary loaf of BREAD finally doomed their relationship.
Rebecca said: “I came home and there was a big loaf of bread on the refrigerator. We had an agreement that we were not going to tempt each other. I felt he wasn’t taking my feelings into consideration. In the weeks after he went back to his old habits.
“He said he was getting bored with what we were eating, and his portion sizes more than doubled. His bedroom was the living room and he was eating at night.”
Paul moved out of her house for the final time in July last year. According to Rebecca, he moved in with a morbidly obese female friend who fed him sweets. She said the woman was an “enabler” and claimed when Paul was with her, he “felt comfortable because he didn’t have to hide anything about himself”.
Rebecca and Paul remained in contact, but their friendship was shaken when he was twice caught shoplifting.
The second time was for stealing 100 items of food worth £827, including ten hamburgers, six large pizzas, eight steaks and a cake for 20 people. Paul’s weight doubled to 40st and now Rebecca fears he will end up in a wheelchair and cost the NHS millions of pounds.
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Paul has a catalogue of problems, including eight hernias in his stomach, severe knee pain and “crippling” arthritis. He will have to get painkillers and other drugs, which cost £1,600 a month in the US, as well as the gastric band replacement, which costs £18,000.
Rebecca said: “I am aware of the criticism he has faced about treatment he can get on the NHS. I have no issue with social services requiring something of people in return — whether that is counselling or community service.
“That to me seems reasonable. But what’s not reasonable is to think he shouldn’t use the NHS, because I don’t see how else he is going to get the help he needs.”
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