My 600 lb Life – Gina

Here’s one that’s still a work in progress after a year or so.

It was a downer at the end, because it finishes with Gina and her wife leaving the hospital after Gina’s weight loss surgery was cancelled, due to her failure to meet her latest weight loss goal.

But altogether, she appears to be in a much stronger position than she was at the beginning of the episode.

At the beginning, Gina was a 607-pound invalid who was being enabled by her wife, mother, sister, and sister’s fiancé, who all lived in the same house.

At the end of the episode, she was 565. Although she was supposed to be under 500 pounds for the surgery, she did put the following changes into effect:

• She lives in her own place with her wife only now (in Houston)
• She cooks for herself now, instead of letting her wife get all the food
• They share a bed
• She does grocery shopping on her own, instead of Beth getting all the groceries (she rides a mobility scooter, and there was a scooter/merchandise display collision, but you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet)
• She goes out with Beth to do social things now, instead of stay in the house

The diet adherence was of course an issue throughout the episode. Both Beth and Gina were enabling each other’s bad eating habits—Beth is obese, as are the other family members.

That will have to change in the second year. Late in the episode, a dietician came in and had to teach them some remedial stuff about food choices, and she hauled some junk food out of the apartment. So they’re still fooling around with non-compliance to the diet.

Hopefully it will—Janine Mueller finished her first year with little progress, but really started moving in her Where Are They Now episode, and if you see her on Facebook you’ll see she’s in great shape.