We've all had those moments of self-loathing when we step on the scale the morning after a Big Mac Attack. But imagine how you would feel if you weren't just a little heavy-you were one of the fattest people on the planet. The heavyweights below have known that feeling, having gained notoriety for their larger-than-life bodies. Read on-and put the brownie down.

Texas housewife Renee Williams made headlines earlier this year when she became, according to The Daily Mail, the heaviest woman known to undergo gastric bypass surgery. Williams tipped the scales at 841 pounds and was unable to care for her children or leave her bed. "It was a hundred percent guaranteed I was gonna die," Williams said at the time of her operation. She was reportedly turned down for the procedure by more than a dozen doctors because of her enormous weight; special hospital equipment had to be brought in to accommodate her size. Unfortunately, the surgery proved too much for the 29-year-old's health, and died after suffering a heart attack just two weeks later, 67 pounds lighter, reports BlogofDeath.com.

Mexico's Manuel Uribe Garza weighs 840 pounds-and that's good news, because he used to weigh 1,235 and was at one point considered the fattest man in the world. According to The Washington Post, the 41-year-old attributed his weight loss to a high-protein diet. The paper also states that Garza's massive weight left him bedridden for years, until he gained international attention in 2006 by pleading for help. After initially considering gastric bypass surgery, Garza chose to instead work with nutritionists on maintaining a healthy diet; he plans to continue that until he reaches his ultimate goal of 265 pounds. "My goal is to leave the house on my own but I know that will be a long process," he said.

When 63-year-old Rosalie Bradford passed away last November, she left behind quite a legacy. In addition to at one point being the third largest person in the world, as her website, RosalieBradford.com, states, Bradford also held not one but two distinctions from the Guinness Book of World Records during her lifetime: one for being the heaviest woman in history (at a weight of approximately 1,200 pounds), and one for having the largest weight loss ever recorded-a staggering 950 pounds, for which she credited Richard Simmons. Bradford was amazingly able to whittle her weight down to 200 pounds, Wikipedia.com reports (note to self: purchase copy of "Sweatin' to the Oldies"), but suffered health complications after having surgery to remove excess skin.

Weighing an astounding 1,072 pounds, Nebraska native Patrick Deuel was trapped in his home for seven years and couldn't sit up, MSNBC reports. In order to get him out of his bedroom, the wall had to be torn down. "My dad says I was supposed to be 8-foot-4," he would joke, "but I quit growing." Since his 2004 rescue, though, the former "half-ton man" underwent gastric bypass surgery, which led to a rapid weight loss-he was already down to 499 by 2005, and Wikipedia claims that he now weighs about 400 pounds. That's a major feat for someone who says he's been obese essentially his entire life. "I'm used to looking in the mirror and seeing the Michelin man," Deuel says. "All of a sudden ... I look a little more like a human being and I say, 'Ooooh, my God, where did HE come from?"'

Jon Brower Minnoch died in 1983, but his large legacy lives on. Tales of his girth-for which he received the distinction of the largest man ever recorded in history-are jaw-dropping. According to Dimensions Magazine, Minnoch was believed to have weighed over 1,400 pounds, 900 pounds of which was considered to be fluid weight caused by severe edema (and you thought your water weight was bad). It took 13 men to turn him over in bed, once gained 200 pounds in just seven days, and his wife reportedly only weighed 110 pounds. Plagued by health problems, an 800-pound Minnoch died at the age of 42.

Carol Yager isn't just the heaviest woman to go down in the record books; she's also the heaviest human being. Although her precise weight has been disputed by some, Dimensions Magazine claims that she weighed an estimated 1,600 pounds at her peak. Like Jon Brower Minnoch, Yager had a lot of fluid retention, which caused her weight to fluctuate. Yager passed away in 1994 at the age of 34 after battling kidney problems. According to Wikipedia.com, she weighed 1,200 pounds at the time of her death.

Fans of "The Jerry Springer Show" will probably recall Denny Welch, the morbidly obese man whom Springer helped rescue from his home in 1996 by paying contractors to tear down a wall in Welch's home. In addition to his Jerry Springer appearances, Welch found another way to make headlines; in 1998 the then-800+-pounder was charged in an Ohio court with three counts of disseminating material harmful to a juvenile (aka showing some kiddos a few porno mags). According to Enquirer.com, which described Welch as a former cross-dresser, his size posed a bit of a logistical problem. The solution: home incarceration. Goofball.com reports that Welch passed away at age 37 less than a year later.

Walter Hudson got the attention of Guinness when the 1,000+-pound man was found wedged in his doorway in 1987. According to Newsday.com, rescue workers had to help him get out. The workers were back in 1991, when they had to cut down a wall and use a forklift to remove Hudson's dead body (a heart attack was the culprit). Newsday.com reports that Hudson weighed 1,125 at the time of his death, and had a waistline that was nine feet in diameter.

Dubbed "the fattest man in Britain," Barry Austin gained fame when he appeared in a British documentary about obesity. As part of the program, Austin-who tipped the scales at 50 stone (700 pounds) was subjected to various tests to analyze the effect of obesity on the body, and as The Observer reports, the results were disturbing: Austin's heart did not rest even when he was relaxing; the fat in his bloodstream was a third more than that in an average man's; and his liver weighed 8 lb. (compared to the 3 lb. average) and was black and covered in fat. Austin blamed his participation in eating and drinking competitions, not to mention a daily diet of "1 lb. of bacon and sausage, six to eight eggs and fried bread...fish and chips for lunch and curry for dinner...and up 20 packets of crisps [chips] a day." After the program, he vowed to change his unhealthy habits and lose weight.

"I wanted to do it [the documentary] to show other people the dangers of obesity," Austin told The Observer. "They said I would have five years to live if I didn't change. That motivated me to alter my ways."

In 2005 Maryland native John Keitz made headlines when firefighters had to use equipment borrowed from the National Aquarium to retrieve him from his apartment, Local6.com reports. The then-800-pound Keitz vowed to lose weight, but sadly passed a few months later at the age of 39 and 50 pounds lighter.

In an article after Keitz's death, The Washington Post wrote, "He [Keitz] could not lie on his back because his chest bulk would suffocate him. He long refused to seek help, until, he feared, it might have been too late. Yet with characteristic bravado, he said: 'Don't underestimate the fat man.'"

Michael Edelman

Michael Edelman is another heavyweight to capture Guinness's attention. According to Dimensions Magazine, the New York native was listed as weighing 994 pounds, though his mother estimated that it had gone up to 1,200. She should know, being 700 pounds herself. Dimensions also reports that Edelman had to leave school at age ten because he could no longer fit in the desk and that he "liked to start the day with four bowls of cereal, toast, waffles, cake, and a quart of soda, and end it with a whole pizza with the works for a bedtime snack." Somewhat ironically, Edelman died of starvation in 1992 after getting his weight down to 600. By then he'd developed a fear of food-prompted by Walter Hudson's premature death-and would only allow himself to be spoon-fed.

Francis John Lang made the "world's heaviest people" list for weighing an unverified 1,187 pounds, Wikipedia.com claims. Dimensions Magazine reports that Lang (also known as Michael Walker) blamed his enormous size on appetite-inducing prescription drugs. He also turned himself into a traveling sideshow, living in a mobile trailer with large windows so bystanders could get a peek. Lang is reported to have since shed several hundred pounds.

Robert Earl Hughes

Contrary to popular belief, Robert Earl Hughes was not buried in a piano case; he was buried in a coffin "the size of a piano case." According to Wikipedia.com, the 1,069-pound Hughes-who died in 1958-earned the Guinness distinction of largest chest measurement ever recorded (10 feet, 4 inches) and for a while was deemed the largest human in history.

Brooklyn's Michael Hebranko tipped the scales at nearly 1,000 pounds when in 1989 Richard Simmons helped him shed over 700 pounds, the Canarsie Courier reports. Unfortunately, the extreme weight loss-which earned him a place in Guinness history-endangered his health, bringing on a series of illnesses. Soon enough, Hebranko turned to food again. "My addiction is food, however, and I need it to subsist; I need it to live," he told the Canarsie Courier. "It's harder for me to keep away from my addiction because I must have it."
Hebranko subsequently packed on the pounds but is now down to 500 pounds thanks to rehabilitation.

Joselina da Silva

At 5'3 and nearly 900 pounds, Brazilian Joselina da Silva had to be cared for the Sao Paulo Fire Brigade as her weight left her bedridden, Dimensions Magazine reports. In 1996, those same firefighters served as her pallbearers. Da Silva, who blamed her heftiness on "massive daily candy, cake, and Coca-Cola binges," did shed several hundred pounds thanks to a fat farm, but soon regained it and ultimately died of aggravated double pneumonia.

Stats: The World's Fattest Countries

Americans may get a lot of flak for being hefty, but according to a report published by the World Health Organization (as reported by Forbes), there are eight chubbier countries ahead of us: Nauru, Federated States of Micronesia, Cook Islands, Tonga, Niue, Samoa, Palau, and Kuwait. (The countries were ranked according to the percentage of overweight adults.) Mexico comes in at #19, the United Kingdom is #28, Canada is #35, Germany is #43, and Jamaica is #49.