A really big date

If you're single and you're convinced that's due to the fact that you've put on a few pounds, well, that may not be the case. I mean, if this guy is dating...

When Manuel Uribe went out on a date, he made all the necessary arrangements: a forklift to carry him out of the house and a flatbed tow truck big enough to haul the formerly half-ton man and his bed to a party.

But even the open road wasn't big enough to handle Uribe's dream of celebrating a budding romance and his success in losing about 440 pounds.

Uribe was halfway to a picnic near his Monterrey-area home on Sunday when one of the posts holding a sun-shielding tarp over his bed hit an overpass.

Uribe's blood pressure dropped so much his doctors advised him not to go on and the celebration — being documented by about two dozen photographers and reporters from around the world — was canceled.

"We were going to celebrate that I've been losing weight for two years and that it was my girlfriend's birthday," Uribe said in a telephone interview. "The saddest part was that I couldn't fulfill my dream of taking my girlfriend out to eat."

Well, I guess he is in better shape than he was a couple of years ago, when he started a new high-protein diet. So maybe slimming down is the key to meeting that special someone, after all.