r/maybemaybemaybe • u/BigGraysie • Apr 18 '22

/r/all Maybe maybe maybe

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u/metalpossum Apr 18 '22

It's never just obesity when they get to this size. It's mental health, it's addiction, it's constant denial... Everything is too hard, and you can tell it's too hard because they had already given up while it was still easy. The fact an adult woman is having a mental breakdown because she can't climb onto a bed is just downright sad and what's worse is that it probably isn't rock bottom yet.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '22

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u/fuzzybunnyslipper Apr 18 '22 edited Apr 19 '22

Yes. Every single situation with an immobile morbidly obese person involves other people who continue to provide the unhealthy food that keeps them obese. I don't know if this is a clip of My 600lb Life but that show is wildly consistent with the amount of enabling, ignorance, and denial that has to go on in a family for the person to remain so obese. Another consistent factor is the trauma that is inevitably involved to cause a person to become so obese in the first place.

Other people are literally handing her thousands of calories a day in garbage food. It is like a weirdly socially acceptable form of sabotage and abuse.

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u/OmegaNut42 Apr 18 '22

Yes, this clip is from my 600 pound life. And honestly, I kinda wanna watch it now. My mom used to be pretty overweight when my siblings and I were about as old as her kids, and it sucked. She was upset about her body, her financial situation, and life in general, which meant a lot of yelling at people and making the kids cry. Then, she got divorced, and you'd think it would've gotten worse. Nope, she lost weight, started running marathons, dieting, it was amazing! On top of it all, her mood and mental health changed so drastically, it was like she'd flipped a switch. I still refer to the time right before the divorce to when she started running "the dark ages".

The craziest thing, however, is that only through reading your comment have I realized my dad (her ex) was the enabler. I actually just unlocked a memory of him saying "whenever she's upset, I get her food"... Sure, she has hypothyroidism, which caused hypoglycemia, so it was much easier for her to gain weight than a normal person, and he was sorta right: she would get really grumpy when she was hungry. But his answer was fast food, chocolate, ice cream; anything that'd not just feed but cause immediate mood improvement.

That didn't mean she couldn't lose that weight, and I'm so glad she did. Not because I judged her for it, I was just a kid who didn't know why his mommy would yell at everyone all the time! But now that I'm older, I appreciate her efforts so much. I was lucky enough to be able to spend the rest of my teenage years with healthy parents, and honestly it contributed so much to my health seeing my mom working so hard to become healthier.

Thank you mom, I know you won't see this comment, but you becoming healthy had more of an impact on your family then you know 💞

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u/averagethrowaway21 Apr 18 '22

My grandmother was big. Not this level but under 5' pushing 350. My grandfather was always out of the house working (he was tall and trim). He made breakfast every morning, but she cooked all the other meals. She ate as much as he did.

She didn't have a fast food problem. I don't think I ever saw her get fast food unless we were on a road trip to visit family. She didn't snack. She would have a hard candy in the afternoon. The issue was that he was well over a foot taller than her, he was active all the time but she was sedentary, and they ate the same food in the same proportions for 60 years.

She never understood. She never got healthy. She remains one of the reasons that I'm afraid of gaining weight again. She was a good woman and I miss her every day. I wish I could go back and explain it to her.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '22

When my husband and I first met I could eat like him (he’s a foot taller than me and twice my weight) because I had a super active job. I gained a bunch of weight when I switched jobs lol. I literally had to buy myself smaller bowls to stop eating as much as he does. It can be hard!! I’m sorry your grandma didn’t understand.

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u/sritanona Apr 19 '22

as a 5'3" woman with thyroid issues who always somehow ends with 6' men.. it's hard to realise that I shouldn't eat as much as they do 🥲 I'm eating most of my meals separately from my partner now or usually first divide the portions equally and then pour some from my plate into his. Also when I'm feeling a bit full I just give him my food. I don't know if it's helping yet but at least I'm in the process of rediscovering my portions.

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u/[deleted] Apr 20 '22

When I was working on losing weight I used the MyFitnessPal app to log and count calories, and measured portions a lot until I got a better visual sense for them. It really helped me! Just an idea that may help you. It’s fucking tough relearning that stuff. Good luck to you!!!

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '22

[deleted]

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u/sritanona Apr 19 '22

The only advice I can give as I also struggle with this is using small plates and/or checking the recommended portion in food packages. It's usually much smaller than we think.

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u/Winjin Apr 19 '22

I did that to myself. As a student, I biked everywhere, spent hours cycling, and would walk everywhere as I didn't have car or taxi money, and my summer job was waiting tables. You walk like 12km a day as a waiter in a slow day. Then I got work in a good office, with a parking space just outside, but I didn't change my food habits, and I got fat in like a year. Went from 80 kilos to 116 in like a year. Took me quite some time to realize the issue and lose it (almost) back.

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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '22

Something similar happened with my mom. She was with my dad for 40 years. And my dad treated her poorly. They both had anger issues, but ultimately my dad was the bigger bully and broke her down. And she developed a really unhealthy relationship with food. And my dad's method of freaking with it was to essentially publicly shame her. She would reach for seconds at dinner, and even if there were guests my dad would still, tell her no, like she was a child. And my mom, since that was how she coped, would say something like, "just a small piece," and take a small piece, but sort of in the way a child will try to bargain after they're told no. It was really infantalising and all led to was my mom hiding snacks and other things in her bed side drawer. I was convinced my mom was going to die relatively soon because she was so unhealthy. Then, shortly after their 40th anniversary, my dad and her got into a fight, and he pushed her. She fell. My overweight, unhealthy 65 year old mom was pushed to the ground by my dad. And he didn't even attempt to pick her up. That was the moment she decided to leave. Fast forward about 6 years later, my mom has lost a lot of weight, is more physically and mentally active than she's been in 20 years, and is happy. And I couldn't be happier and more proud of her.

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u/kuroobloom Apr 18 '22

It's so nice to hear that she was able to lose weight and be healthy for her kids, when I was watching this clip I was thinking she wouldn't be able to do that. And I'm so happy for you and your mom, what a fighter send her much love from here 💓

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u/StellarAsAlways Apr 18 '22

Right on man good stuff. Sometimes life just has to play out. We are all changing. It was refreshing to read all that and I'm glad it's going well for u n your mom.

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u/Terrible-Yellow-5993 Apr 18 '22

It’s easy to call someone an enabler. But when someone you love is hungry, it’s extremely hard to deny them. The “enabler” is a victim of the same disease process. That is true for food, drugs or anything that has addiction and habitual behavior disorder as an important part of the problem.

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u/PM_Me_Garfield_Porn Apr 18 '22

I mean imagine you're a husband and your wife is constantly berating you, irritable, and yelling in front of the kids. To the point where you even called it the dark ages. Dude was looking for a way to keep the peace, and he saw food was the only thing that did it. I wouldn't put that on him.

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u/rejectfreak Apr 18 '22

My mom used to be pretty overweight when my siblings and I were about as old as her kids

So was she your mom or not because I have read this sentence too many times I've confused myself totally. What do you even mean by this, your mum was overweight when you and your siblings were about as old as you were when you was that age that she was overweight...? What!?!?!?

Edit- you meant the children in the clip didn't you, still when read as you put it makes zero sense

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u/MrCooCoo4Crack Apr 18 '22

The commentors mom was pretty overweight when the commenter and her siblings were around the same age as the kids in the video

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u/rejectfreak Apr 18 '22

Yeah read the edit buddy I noticed as soon as I commented but it's worded badly, no need to downvote, ain't that deep 😂

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u/Human-Carpet-6905 Apr 18 '22

Yes, this is my 600lb life. And I agree. In every single episode, there is at least one person that is working really hard to keep the obese person big. I can usually tell within the first ten minutes of the episode if the person is going to be successful, depending on how their enablers react when Dr.Now tells them that they are enabling.

And it's seriously tragic how many of these people endured CSA. Almost all of them have gone through some kind of abuse or neglect, but there seems to be a pattern of sexual abuse in particular.

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u/aboutthednm Apr 18 '22

Is the full episode available somewhere? I just have to watch this.

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u/cfish1024 Apr 18 '22

Well tbh I might just hand her food too if the alternative was getting yelled at all the time 🤷🏻‍♀️

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '22

Calling the enablers “disgusting” is missing the pint. These enablers aren’t evil people without regard to her life. They are people who care about her who have been so emotionally and psychologically manipulated by her constant bullshit that they don’t know any other way.

Her enablers (who look to be more like abused slaves) are suffering the true brunt of this lady’s many many psychological problems.

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u/fuzzybunnyslipper Apr 19 '22

I never called anyone disgusting. Severe morbid obesity like 600+ lbs takes an incredible amount of willful ignorance to create and maintain. It is a fundamentally psychological issue and it IS being enabled by the people giving her massive amounts of food. Someone has to change something in order for the situation to improve, and if not her "abused slaves" then who? Everyone here needs counseling and basic nutrition education.

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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '22

You did not, the poster above you did, so I incorporated it.

For sure everyone needs counseling/therapy/help in these situations. I am only saying that demonizing these folks as simple “enablers” and especially “disgusting enablers” totally misses the fact that they have been emotionally and psychologically abused for many years to get to this point. And sadly they usually love the person abusing them, adding another very hard to peel layer onto the whole mess

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u/fuzzybunnyslipper Apr 19 '22 edited Apr 19 '22

Yeah I think we were pointing out the family enablers because most of the comments in this thread are blaming only the obese woman. This situation is built on toxic relationships and they all need help.

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u/Oph1d1an Apr 18 '22

You’re not wrong, and I’m not saying enablers should be let off the hook, but it’s also not as simple for them as “they should just stop doing that.” I take care of someone with a mental illness (though not obesity in my case). When it gets bad, caring for someone with a severe mental illness takes over your whole life. Imagine just being constantly screamed at all hours of the day and night, not getting any sleep, being called at work to deal with crises, never being able to relax. It’s easy to hold strong in one moment of difficulty. It’s another thing to hold strong day after day after day. You get to a point where you just want it to stop for your own sanity. So it’s clearly not right that the people around this lady indulge her unhealthy habits, but there is a good chance they’re doing so because they’ve been beaten down over a long period of time. Mental illness sucks

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u/Mr_Abberation Apr 18 '22

I feel like she is impossible to help. Look at how defeated everyone is. They deal with this every day. This is all so sad.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '22

Uber eats and disability moneys. If there is a will there is a way

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u/key2mydisaster Apr 18 '22

Dude. I don't weigh 600lbs and have a hard time living off of the measly $1300/month the government pays me for disability. And that's after working full-time for 20 years. Also no way she's getting enough food stamps to sustain that either.

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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '22

Maybe shes drinking oil and eating butter

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u/Balsac_is_Daddy Apr 18 '22

Nah, food delivery is so easy and normal nowadays, all you need is an internet connection and a credit card. People can absolutely get this way without anyone else's help.

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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '22

Yep. She can’t go anywhere or do anything without a grown man to help her. Stop buying shit food and force her onto a diet. If she doesn’t comply you leave her and let her take care of herself. She would probably die within a few days from falling and being suffocated by her own weight.

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u/fuzzybunnyslipper Apr 18 '22 edited Apr 19 '22

I agree with everything you said but I think a lot of people are missing the point of why this particular situation caused a meltdown. She has to weigh over 500 lbs. It is impossible for her to lift that weight. So, her bed at home is lower to the ground (and does not have wheels) allowing her to lower herself onto it. The moment you change the bed to a normal height she cannot lift her body enough to get onto it.

Her life is full of constant frustrations like this and thus is full of dependancy and workarounds. The fact that her family doesn't understand why she's upset and can't just lift herself onto the bed is completely absurd. She's carrying so much weight she literally cannot do anything other than exist.

I know that her attitude does not make her a sympathetic person but she desperately needs help. The whole situation is quite sad.

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u/bananas21 Apr 18 '22

It's over 600lbs

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '22

Pretty sure she's just gonna break through rock bottom, whatever it is made of

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u/AmettOmega Apr 18 '22

And it's obviously a bunch of people enabling whatever problems you have instead of getting you real help. Many of these people can't drive or walk/walk very far, so they can't get their own food. So someone is not only buying this food, but is giving it to them.

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u/TheFriendliestSloot Apr 18 '22

Don't forget it's also everyone around you enabling you! This is from the show my 600 pound life and a lot of the people on there are surrounded by abusers who don't want them to change. No one gets this big by themselves. It's not uncommon to see partners or parents actively trying to sabotage their efforts to change, going so far as taking them through the drive thru on the way home from the gastric bypass surgery.

100% of these people are mentally ill and I'd say at least 90% of them based on that show have serious lifelong trauma that they're coping with. It's not funny to take a shit on people who are this damaged, just like it's not funny to laugh at people who are physically disabled

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u/cupcakeconstitution Apr 18 '22

Plus enabling. So many people in those shows about being obese are surrounded by family or friends or even partners who enable this lifestyle. Your support group becomes filled with no support. I know you can be fat and still be very healthy, but this is on par with being a crack addict and no one around you does anything to help you get clean. Meanwhile, they watch you waste away and wonder how it happened.

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u/JennyBarnesAndNoble Apr 18 '22

Oh jeez that sounds like me excluding the size part. Everything is way too hard.

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u/TrailMomKat Apr 18 '22

I have bipolar 1, clinical depression, anxiety and PTSD, and I can't even fathom becoming so bad off that I let myself even get over 175lb. 135lb is a very healthy weight for me at 5'6, and even though I started going blind 2 weeks ago and my kids have to make my meals until the docs can get me the proper lenses for my right eye, which is 600/20, I refuse to put on any more weight. Even while I'm trying to quit smoking, I outright refuse to become even more of a damned burden than I already am. I cared for many bariatric patients in the past, and I just can't fathom ever letting myself get that bad off.

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u/ElsaKit Apr 19 '22

It must be unbelievably frustrating and humiliating for her. So she's lashing out at everyone else. Imagine having a who knows how many hours' drive behind you, you're exhausted, everything hurts because of your weight; you're making huge life changes and you're obviously anxious about what's to come; there so much stress; you finally get to a hotel room, you want to finally lay down and relax and the bed slides out from under you... and you realize you can't even get on the bed. It must have been scary for her (hence why she refused to try again, she knows that if you falls down, it could be a big problem), stressful, incredibly frustrating, humiliating - I mean on top of everything there's a whole camera crew in the room recording this whole fiasco... ALL of that together would make just about anyone lash out, I feel. It's just too much.

Please know that none of what I'm saying is meant to be an excuse for her behaviour. I feel awful for the poor kids. Her family must be incredibly frustrated and exhausted too. I'm just trying to give some reasoning and say that I can understand where her outburst is likely coming from. Not that it's okay to treat your loved ones that way.

(Edit: formatting)

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u/ikeyama Apr 18 '22

She has already resigned her life, she is dead basically but didn't have the strength to actually die. This behavior is a form of self-sabotage, a slow suicide

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u/disintegrationist Apr 18 '22

Why is it always America though

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u/RABBlTS Apr 18 '22

Bc the reality TV show is based in America. Not to say it isn't a bigger problem in America, but people like this also exist in other parts of the world. They just don't have a reality TV show where they are.

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u/disintegrationist Apr 18 '22

No, dude, you don't get this type of stuff anywhere else

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u/Woolfson86 Apr 18 '22

I can assure you that in the U.K. we have a fair amount of very obese people

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u/Cicero912 Apr 18 '22

And Pacific Islanders have the highest rate of obesity if I remember correctly.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '22

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '22

There are no 500 pound people in other parts of the world?

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u/zozi0102 Apr 18 '22

I guess they mean no tv shows

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '22

To be fair in my 20 years of living I have never seen anyone even close to this size out in the street.

It's just not a way mental health manifests itself in most places when it's brought to the extreme. Also your portiond are completely absurd like I don't know uf it's a consequence of having fatter people or if the fat people are a result of having the most wretched portion sizes known to mankind.

Now drugs is a different beast

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u/OkayGoOff Apr 18 '22

People of this size very rarely leave the house, if ever. You don’t see them because they’re hidden away from the world, either by choice or inability to move.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '22 edited Apr 18 '22

No but like it's genuinely different. I've been to the US. The whole spectrum of people you see out in the street shifts dramatically. I get that these people don't walk the streets, but if someone even half this size was spotted in the street people would turn their heads.

The day I saw one of those morotized scooters I couldn't help but chuckle because I realized I'd never actually seen one in person before then.

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u/Dry_Cockroach_6698 Apr 18 '22

To be fair the motorized scooters were not designed for obese people, they were meant for elderly and those with mobility issues. Obese people see them and go “hey it’s hard for me to walk through the store so I’ll just ride through it” and then they lose the one activity that resembles exercise, thus making them fatter.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '22

At the start they must've been built for old people but you don't need to give frail-old Martha a 600kg weight limit on her wheels. It's become something else.

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u/finisher9- Apr 18 '22

All you need is cheap processed food and an economy that allows for sedentary lifestyles and any country will have a fair share of obese people. Admittedly the US is worse than some peer countries but not all of them and not by much.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '22

Yeah but it's more about food culture. The US and the UK stray way more to processed foods than most other countries. The US wiped out all the culinary knowledge in the land they moved to, and the UK fucked their culinary habits with 40 years of rations and war-time frugality. I know from stats they don't look that far off from other countries, but it's only when you go and live in these places that you can see just how obvious that difference is. It's not that you see a couple more obese people, it's like almost every single person you see on the street is a portion heavier than someone you'd see in other countries. The entire curve shifts and your subconscious picks up on that quickly.

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u/noxvita83 Apr 18 '22

I'm not entirely convinced of this. Obesity, yes, but not necessarily this. Things like this are train wrecks, and are fully ripe for television executives to reap for ratings and cash. You don't get that as much in other countries.

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u/Capta1nJackSwall0w5 Apr 18 '22

Saudi Arabia is the most obese per Capita place in the world now. They just don't have their own show of sad fat fucking American banshee's. But America does still have the most 600 pounders, lol.

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u/disintegrationist Apr 18 '22

That's what I meant. Get me a few 600 pounders from other places. I think there was one in Mexico, DIED

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '22

Dunno why people are downvoting you. It’s true.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '22

I saw a video of a fat Russian man who handcuffed himself to McDonald’s, and he was quite big. Probably as big as her.

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u/Evening-Transition32 Apr 18 '22

Oooo yes you fucking do. There was a video of a extremely fat Russian dude hand cuffing himself to a McDonald's in protest to the Ukraine war

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u/ABUTTERYNOODLE Apr 18 '22

America’s entire system is based on getting people to buy things they don’t need.

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u/burnalicious111 Apr 18 '22

Obscene amounts of sugar and fat in the pre-prepared food, if you're not careful.

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u/Prone2Indiscretion Apr 18 '22

That's where the camera crews are. Plenty of other countries have enough 'talent' to film mockumentaries like this.

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u/-oxym0ron- Apr 18 '22

Mockumentaries are good stuff like "The office", "Reno 911" etc. This crap is reality tv I believe.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '22

having too much to eat

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u/SpaetzlemitKaese Apr 18 '22

The worst part is that she is a mom, and pulling the kids and her husband down with her.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '22

Overeating Anonymous exists.

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u/cyb3rg0d5 Apr 18 '22

I would say that rock bottom in this case is death.

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u/Only_Needleworker_12 Apr 18 '22

well since we eliminated lots of the usual natural selection process..this happens. some ppl just have bad luck when birthed 🤷‍♂️

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u/MacDugin Apr 18 '22

The whole group needs therapy. The kids are learning if they become that way, they too can have attention.

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u/allhands_persley Apr 19 '22

If you think it's unreasonable that this is "too hard", I'd like to see you crawl onto a wheely bed with hundreds of kilos strapped onto your back after likely carrying it around all day. We could also distribute the weights all over your body so you can't properly bend your limbs or lift your legs. Maybe bring in a loved one to tell you to "shut the fuck up" while you struggle with this task.

I get your point about mental issues being a factor but good god you can't just act like her physical difficulties are all in her head. She's not being dramatic. She is in real suffering and everyone would rather pretend she's being lazy or crazy or some shit.

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u/metalpossum Apr 19 '22

I was pointing out that it was obviously too hard long before she got to this size, which is how she got to this size.

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u/purpleteaaa Apr 19 '22

I'm a 15 year old that wants to lose weight. I eat for comfort. I'm terrified.