14 DAY TRIAL // TLC has a history of producing and airing reality shows and TV specials that no other network would touch, and it seems that they plan on continuing in this direction into the New Year. Confirmation has come that a third season of the hit series My 600-lb Life will air starting January 7.
Embedded below is the first teaser trailer for the new season, introducing audiences to the case of Amber, a 24-year-old woman from Troutdale, Oregon, who is desperate to lose weight and change her life.
My 600-lb Life is a series focusing on several cases of morbidly obese people who undergo gastric bypass surgery after a lifelong struggle with weight, their addiction to food, depression, and other issues. The new season will also catch up on the progress of the people featured on the previous one.
Amber can’t wash herself, is barely able to move around the house
Useless to say, this isn’t a series for the weak of heart, because it takes a very long and insistent look at the lives of all the people whose cases it presents, presumably in a bid to offer the best representation of the hell they’re living in.
Take Amber, for example. She’s 24 and she tips the scales at 660 pounds (299.3 kg). She can still move around the house, but only barely so – and she can go up and down the stairs, but not without the greatest effort.
Amber used to be a student at the Portland State University and she had a job; she dropped out of school and quit her job, and is now living with her parents, with her mother being her primary caretaker. She never goes out of the house and has ceased contact with her former friends, and believes that she’s a disappointment to everyone, but particularly her parents.
If she doesn’t lose weight, she will not be able to have any kind of life. Today, it takes her one hour to get out of bed, and she can’t wash properly anymore: the closest thing she comes to a bath these days means sitting on the toilet and scrubbing herself with a brush, and pouring water over her head.
Amber is eating herself to death
Amber knows that she’s eating herself to death but she can’t stop: she’s caught in that never-ending circle of shame and guilt, which triggers more overeating. “I feel trapped. I feel miserable. I feel like I have failed myself and my parents,” she cries.
Amber started gaining weight when she was 4, but things only got very, very bad as she stopped moving round as much as she used to. Because the pounds kept piling on, she would move less and less, and the result is that, today, she can’t walk around her own house without pain in her entire body.
Amber’s mother describes her as the classic underachiever, and she says it breaks her heart to see her own child in this state, especially when she’s still young and should be out there, living her life.
Amber gets a second chance
Amber and 7 other morbidly obese people will be getting another chance at losing weight with the TLC special. Besides documenting their cases on camera, the network will also be paying for their gastric bypass surgeries and will provide whatever assistance they need to help them stay on track with dieting and working out.
For many of these people, this is their last chance at losing weight and finally getting to live the life they always wanted but probably never had. Amber is convinced that this is the case for her.
