Guatemalan who lost more than 500 pounds seeks to remove excess skin

Elder Castillo’s skin was beginning to decompose, breathing was an exhausting task, and movement was impossible.

He was 26 years old and had reached 841 pounds, a weight that made him the most obese man in Guatemala and that left him trapped in a bed, dependent on his family and convinced that death was getting closer.

“I was already suffering from elephantiasis, that is, I was already deformed in my feet and everything, and then the veins in my legs began to burst and blood came out, I was practically in a state of decomposition, it was God who kept me alive,” he recalled.

“I remember that I served in the church and there came a stage where no vehicle would take me because of my weight and, when I managed to pull myself away, when I returned it was difficult because there was no one to drop me off and I came on foot, and suddenly I came urinating blood because my body couldn’t handle the movement, my navel was also bleeding,” he said.

His feet remained swollen, with fever and wounds that required permanent care, while his body accumulated more and more weight due to a metabolic endocrine disorder that accelerated his deterioration.

Seven years after believing that his days were numbered, Elder Castillo, 36, told LA PRENSA Premium how he managed to lose more than 500 pounds and recover a life that seemed impossible, although he recognizes that “the battle is not over yet.”

Castillo is originally from the village Campamento, Tenedores, belonging to the municipality of Morales, in the department of Izabal, Guatemala. There he was born, raised and currently lives with his parents, wife and children.

Before becoming a symbol of perseverance for thousands of people on social media, he went through years of physical pain, isolation and hopelessness.

From 2016 to 2022, he was practically immobilized and unable to work, depending on his parents, Israel Castillo and Auralia Villafuerte, and his wife Leidy López for the most basic tasks, from bathing to moving around his own home.

“I was able to half get up sometimes, my wife would warm shuffle sheets to put on my feet so they could relax. Look, waking up was pure mercy, but staying through the day was even more difficult because I suffered a lot of pain and they injected me with strong antibiotics for infections,” he said.

“At that time I was already losing faith, my faith faltered because I cried out, prayed, fasted and I didn’t see that things even moved a little in my favor, but every day I looked worse,” he recalled.

The days passed between intense pain, infections and the constant fear of not waking up the next day. In fact, several doctors who knew about his case had given up hope for him, telling him that there was no hope for life in his case.

The situation became so critical that he began to prepare for death. Being convinced that he had no way out, he asked his father to find a space in his community’s cemetery to build the vault where he would be buried.

“I told my dad to pick a place for me in the cemetery and leave me a little edge so they could put flowers on me because I like flowers,” she said.

The family even selected the land and carried out preliminary work on the site to fulfill the last wish of Elder. However, destiny would take a different turn shortly after.

The Guatemalan has been a faithful believer in God and for years he dedicated part of his time to service work in vulnerable communities in Izabal.

Before extreme obesity confined him to a bed, he participated in evangelistic activities, community visits and social support days in villages and hamlets in the region, bringing messages of faith and collaborating with low-income families.

His story changed when a member of his church, identified as Williams, reached out to offer help. Until then, the Guatemalan pastor did not know him, but that meeting would be the beginning of a process that would end up transforming his life.

“I am alive here, talking to you, because God has been good and because there were people who supported me to cover all the expenses of this treatment,” he said.

Williams proposed that he travel to Guatemala City so that specialists could evaluate his condition and Elder met the bariatric surgeon Juan Altuve and the nutritionist Pamela Peña.

Weighing more than 800 pounds, specialists ruled out an immediate operation, saying he had to prepare physically and medically to endure a high-risk surgery.

The challenge seemed impossible because Elder did not have a job, was sick, and did not have the resources to pay for the constant trips of more than six hours between Morales, Izabal, and the Guatemalan capital. “I said: what is this going to be like if I don’t have a single penny?” he confessed.

But as the treatment progressed, an unexpected support network also began to emerge.

It turns out that pastors, church members, neighbors and people who knew the social work he carried out in vulnerable communities began to organize activities to raise funds and help him cover the high medical expenses involved in his recovery.

At the same time, his story began to become known, to the point that in 2020 it was broadcast on television and later some videos published on social networks went viral.

Although many users mocked his condition, Elder decided to turn that criticism into fuel to keep going. “I saw so many bad comments that I said ‘I’m going to show them that those who trust in God will never be ashamed,’” he recalled.

Driven by that determination, he began recording himself walking, exercising and covering small distances despite the limitations of his body.

Under a strict diet of just 900 calories a day, accompanied by medications and constant controls, he began to obtain results that seemed impossible for years.

The first month he lost 37 pounds. “I had never been able to lose a single pound. When I saw that result I said ‘yes it can be done,'” he said.

The bariatric surgery (consists of reducing the size of the stomach), which lasted about five hours, marked a before and after in Castillo’s life, but the most difficult part was just beginning.

While his body recovered from the operation, he had to adapt to a new way of living, as liquid nutrition replaced his usual meals and, despite the pain of internal injuries, doctors forced him to get up and walk just hours after surgery.

He subsequently underwent a gastric bypass, reducing the size of the stomach and redirecting part of the small intestine to limit the amount of food consumed and absorbed, thus promoting more accelerated and sustained weight loss.

Medications, gastric protectors, medical check-ups and a strict diet became part of a routine that Elder followed to the letter, as each step was necessary to ensure the success of the procedure that was giving him back his life.

Today, seven years after beginning his fight against obesity, Elder weighs 330 pounds. He has lost 511 pounds and regained mobility that he thought was impossible for years. However, the battle is not over yet.

The excess skin left after the drastic weight loss has become a new challenge for him, so his new goal is to undergo a reconstructive procedure to remove between 70 and 80 pounds of excess skin.

“It’s too much dead skin and it gives me a lot of irritation, plus this dead tissue is preventing me from continuing to lose weight,” he explained while showing the folds that hung from his arm.

But the obstacle is not only medical, since the cost of operations and a recovery that could last more than a year represent a financial burden that is difficult to assume for someone who subsists on small agricultural crops and the care of animals.

Even so, uncertainty has not managed to defeat the faith that sustained him during the darkest years of his life. “It was more difficult when I was bedridden and weighed more than 800 pounds. If God helped me get out of there, He will also help me finish this process,” he said convinced.

As he said in conversation with this medium, for him, weight loss was more than changing his appearance. It was about recovering the opportunity to continue serving others, to hug his children again and to help his parents, who years ago were the ones who supported him when he could no longer support himself.

Although the body he carries today is very different from that of that 26-year-old trapped by extreme obesity, the dream is still to live long enough to continue helping others.

“God gave me a second chance. Now I want to use it to do something good for other people,” he said.