The new season of My 600-lb Life premieres Dec. 30 and begins with Samantha’s story. Samantha reveals in our EXCLUSIVE preview that she “chose to start fetish modeling” in order to make money. “I eat for people,” she says. “I just eat what I want and they pay for it, as long as I film it. So that’s how I make a living and keep going, and it makes me feel appreciated so I’m happy to do it.”
Her daughter admits that her mom’s “self-image really improved after she started that modeling job. It kind of makes her happier because those people just find her as beautiful. They find her as a human being, not some huge maniac.”
However, Samantha knows that this job is ultimately not a good thing for her. “There’s no question that this job has been unhealthy for me because I found the perfect community to reinforce my worst habits. I last weighed in 6 months ago legitimately, and I was at 811 pounds,” she reveals.
It’s been more than 10 years since Samantha has traveled anywhere without bariatric transport. Her immobility has never posed such a problem until now, because at 6’2″ and nearly 900 pounds, Sam wants Dr. Now to help her with her food addiction, but there’s not even an ambulance in the state of Colorado that is willing to transport her to Houston to meet with him.
Samantha has been in and out of the hospital with one problem after another, each admittance a reminder that her body is breaking down and her time is running out. Determined to help Samantha, Dr. Now coordinates with his colleague Dr. Heydari, a bariatric surgeon in Colorado, to perform a high-risk emergency surgery in hopes of curbing Samantha’s weight gain before it kills her. But as Dr. Now knows all too well, operating on a patient will give them a smaller stomach, but there’s no magic cure for an eating disorder that has roots in the formative years of a patient’s life. The successful surgery can be undone if a patient doesn’t make a major lifestyle change. If Samantha wants to live and see her daughter graduate from college, she must take difficult steps in order to change her own toxic patterns. My 600-lb. Life airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on TLC.