Michael says many people don't understand how he got to the point where firefighters had to knock down his wall and lift him out of his home with a forklift. "I didn't just wake up one morning and say, 'Oh, I've got to go to the hospital.' I knew I was getting sick," he says. "But I knew that once I had to leave the house—that Michael Hebranko, the World's Greatest Dieter, was going to have to go the hospital—the press would [be there]."

The media jumped on Michael's story. "What I was feeling the most for was my son in college," he says. "He had to go to school that day, and there I was in every newspaper—not the way I wanted fame."