Their 600lb Life

I have always been that fat kid in social gatherings when I was growing up.  Like my mother, I was always hesitant to be photographed.  There was absolutely no fun to be had when going shopping for clothes.  Clothes intended for boys my age typically did not fit me, to where I usually had to wear clothes that were intended for young adult men.  I was always wearing clothes intended for a much older demographic.  I could never be on the “skins” (i.e. “shirts vs. skins”) team whenever some kind of pick-up sports game broke out in the neighborhood, because frankly, no one would have wanted to see my belly hanging out, much less see it while it was in motion.  During medical visits, I was always told that I needed to drop a few pounds.  Some doctors were more creative than other doctors when telling me this.  One of the cleverer responses I’d get regarding my weight when I was growing up was, “Well, you don’t miss many meals, do you?”  The most I could do is chuckle and then readily agree.  Obviously, there’s not much else I could say in response.  Yes, as a kid, I rarely missed meals, or snacks, or most opportunities to eat.

This brings us to the point of this entry.  In between my gaming sessions or even just to pass the time watching the misery of others, I tend to watch a lot of YouTube reactions to My 600lb Life.  I always say that as much as you think your life sucks, there’s always someone out there who has it considerably worse.  As big as I may have been in high school and even heading into my freshman year at USC, there is no way in hell that I would have ever reached a weight anywhere near 600 pounds.  I think I would have had some kind of revelation well before I could have ever reached that point, the kind of revelation that would have made me stop eating so much.  I suppose I did have this revelation once I got to college and realized that I pretty much had to walk everywhere, because driving to and from campus was wholly impractical.  The point is, I don’t think that I would have surpassed even 400 pounds, much less reach anything remotely close to 600.  I think that at my heaviest, maybe I hit 350.  In previous years, I had an aversion to scales, to where I seldom weighed myself whenever there happened to be a scale in the vicinity.  As curious as I might have ever been about how much I weighed, I was never THAT curious to get on a scale and find out.

I don’t intend to make fun of anyone because they might weigh over 400 pounds, because that’s low hanging fruit and really, that humor is in relatively poor taste.  I watch the show to see how day-to-day life can be a challenge for some.  Things that we take for granted can prove to be damn near impossible for those who are morbidly obese.  Sometimes, just the mere act of getting out of bed can be way too difficult for some.  Other challenges include bathing, walking, breathing, and sometimes even talking.  Still, one thing that never seems to be an obstacle is eating.  These folks are eating some pretty massive meals, almost as though they are eating for two or three people in one sitting.  I might have challenged myself in years past, to see how much I could eat in one sitting, but this was not a regular occurrence.  It wasn’t like I was regularly trying to eat two Big Macs back-to-back.  I think I did that once, or maybe even twice, just to see if I could do it.  Today, I couldn’t fathom doing anything like that.

You see, starting in August 2022, my life and overall attitude towards food changed.  Doctor Fiers, who incidentally specializes in obese medicine, decided that I was too fat for his liking and reputation, to where he decided to prescribe me Ozempic.  He was banking on the weight loss that can accompany being on this particular medication, being that the pill form of this medication did little for me.  He was convinced that the injectable version of this drug would work much better than the pill form.  Now 11 months in, I’d say that Doctor Fiers was right.

I’ve dropped close to 60 pounds since last August.  I don’t eat much anymore.  The medication simply will not allow me to do so.  I still eat three meals a day, though these meals are considerably smaller than what I had been used to eating years ago.  I rarely snack, though it seems that when I do, I’m usually eating cheese, or as I refer to it, a “calcium supplement”.  I need to increase my water intake, as I suppose most of us ought to anyway.  I can’t eat emotionally anymore, because I don’t have the appetite for it anymore.  Now I have to deal with stress the natural way, I guess.  I have to process things and let things dissipate naturally, without having to medicate with food.  Indeed, the medication has brought about change in my life and I have embraced it.

I know that I’m on medication that has helped me and has contributed to my weight loss.  I think because of this, I watch My 600lb Life with a different eye, a different mindset.  I now see how much power and grip that food can have on a person.  If your emotions are out-of-whack, food can be quite the comfort and can help, albeit temporarily, restore someone’s state of normalcy.  I would never wish obesity or a food addiction upon anyone, because these can truly be crippling.  I know that a lot of people on the show have failed in their quest towards losing weight.  This just goes to show how powerful food can be for some and it can be crippling.

I don’t make fat jokes anymore.  I just don’t.  Now, midget jokes…yeah, there will always be a market for those.