The Season 3 of TLC’s reality series, My 600-lb Life , which debuts next month, features Amber, 24, from Troutdale, Oregon, who weighs an incredible 660 lbs. She is so morbidly obese that she is housebound and hardly able to stand or walk.
Amber, who lives under the care of her parents and her boyfriend, will be the first of several obese persons to feature in the 12-part Season 3 of TLC’s show, My 600-lb Life , which premieres Jan. 7.
The reality show chronicles the lives of eight morbidly obese Americans as they prepare to undergo gastric bypass surgery.
Amber dropped out of Portland State University and lost her job after her weight issues became unmanageable. Because she is unable to fit into a bathtub, she gives herself a sponge bath sitting over a toilet.
“Everything hurts… my back hurts, my shins hurt. I am so limited in what I can do and where I can go. I feel trapped. I feel trapped. I’m miserable.”
Amber expresses disgust about her condition, saying that she feels like a “nasty yucky monster.”
Although she seems pessimistic about her chances of success with her gastric bypass surgery, saying she fears she will “never be able to change,” she expresses hope that the surgery will allow her to return to the normal life she was forced to give up.
Amber admits tearfully that she is “killing herself” with her overeating and complains that she suffers pain in her back and her shins.
“Sometimes I think to myself, I’m never gonna change. I feel like a nasty, yucky monster…”
She also said she “sees a lot of pity in my mum’s face when she looks at me… mostly I think she’s just sad for me.”
“I feel like I have failed myself and my parents.”
Nearly all the subjects trace the origin of their overeating and weight problems back to a traumatic experience in their childhood. For instance, Susan, from Eddy, Texas, a 37-year-old who weighs 600 lbs and depends on her mother for care, traces her weight challenges back to her parents’ divorce when she was a young child. She said the incident triggered depression.
Pauline, 50, from Sacramento, California, also traces her overeating and weight problems back to her parents’ divorce. She said after her parents divorced she could not get enough to eat, but after they reunited there was so much food that she lost control and “didn’t know when to stop eating.”
By the time she was 12 years old she weighed 200 lbs. She weighed 500 lbs at the time of her divorce a few years ago, but now she weighs 700 lbs.
Charity, 38, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, traces her weight issues to physical and emotional abuse that started early in her life. Charity, who weighs 787 lbs, depends on her daughter Charley for care.
Angela, 42, from Kerville, Texas, lives with her boyfriend Donnie. She traces the origin of her weight issues to when she was forced at 14 to give up her infant child. By the time she had her second baby at 20, she weighed 300 lbs. But after her third child and her father’s death, she suffered profound depression and “ate herself into oblivion.” In a short time, she had ballooned to 596 lbs.
Other cases featured in the reality series include Laura, 40, who lives in San Antonio, Texas. She weighs 554 lbs and suffers multiple health issues, including skin ulcers and swelling of her body tissues.
Bettie Jo, 24, lives in Potosi, Missouri, with Josh, her husband. She weighs nearly 700 lbs. She and her husband wish to raise a family but they are unable because of Bettie’s condition. Josh is described as having become his wife’s “primary caretaker rather than romantic partner.”
Joe, 31, the only male featured, from Johnson City, Tennessee, weighs 802 lbs. He lost his job due to his weight problems and is now totally confined to his living room chair. He is unable to bathe himself.
The first episode of Season 3 of TLC’s My 600-lb Life , will also feature members of the second season’s cast who have made progress in their effort to change their lives.
[Images: TLC ]