In 1972 a man named Don Gorske walked into a McDonald’s establishment and ordered his first Big Mac at a price of 49 cents. The rest, as they say is history.

Since that day, Gorske has been hooked, eating as many as nine Big Macs a day, though nowadays he has cut it down to a modest two. At the age of 17, Gorske started keeping track of the amount of Big Macs he ate and the number has totaled up. In 2003, he ate his 19,000th Big Mac, a Guinness world record. Currently he’s at over 19,800 Big Macs.

Gorske eats almost nothing but Big Macs and drinks basically nothing but Coke and has been doing so for 25 years now. "I admit I’m obsessive compulsive," he says. "I have so many compulsions."

Gorske’s own estimates have him consuming over this span nearly 3,000 pounds of the beef patties, 6 million sesame seeds, hundreds of heads of lettuce and over 29,000 pickle slices. It’s estimated that he’s spent over $50,000 on his Big Mac habit.

"I just eat these because I love them," he says. "I really look forward to Big Macs."

He met his wife Mary in 1973 at "somewhere around 1,500 Big Macs" as Gorske put it. He proposed to her in a McDonald’s parking lot and while walking down the aisle nervously he had in hand his comfort food…you guessed it.

In the past 15 years or so, Gorske claims to have missed only a week’s worth of Big Macs due to his mother’s death, a blizzard and a 600-mile drive featuring no McDonald’s on the way. To avoid such conflicts, Gorske buys extra Big Macs and freezes them these days.

So is risking your health for a world record and a lot of Big Macs the reason Gorske is this week’s Man of the Week. Well that, but more so the fact that he seems to be in very good health considering.

With a John Lennon look right out of the era of his first Big Macs, Gorske is 6 feet tall and a mere 180 pounds. His cholesterol, below 160 (below 200 is considered good). He has defied the odds. In the fast food documentary, Supersize Me, he says he angers coworkers struggling to lose weight by suggesting the Gorske diet. No extraneous exercise, no heart-racing pills, none of this pansy Al Roker stomach-stapling, Gorske just eats his Big Macs, and with little consequence, physically at least.

As the movie Supersize Me examined, there are a number of litigious obese Americans suing the McDonalds chain for their eating habits and lack of self control. Gorske also represents the opposite to this frivolous hogwash, with attorneys defending McDonald’s using Gorske as an example of someone who frequently ate fast food but stayed slim.

Chow down you handsome devil.