From The Sidelines
(Extended Version)
January 23rd, 2026. In my spare time I watch a show called "My 600 Pound Life". It's a show you can turn on, fall asleep and wake up to, over and over for days if you wanted. While watching one episode in particular recently, I couldn't help but wonder about the aspect of social work involved. Oftentimes you see these women in excess of 500 pounds being followed around by a much smaller unemployed fiance or husband. The episode in particular that I was watching that gave me cause to write this article specifically brought up this point.
The husband clearly had no regard for his wife's well being at all. Oftentimes commenting that his biggest concern was that she would "drop the weight and leave me". He mentions this over and over again while feeding her the worst foods, and not only that, but standing no less than six feet from her at all times watching like a hawk while she ate. When friends came over, friends that did not like or trust this man, he stood there with his arms crossed no less than six feet away, watching and listening. One can not help but ponder at what went on while the cameras were off. And what, if any sort of intervention this situation received.
The show itself, after all, is not about the family aspect but about the weight loss journey of the subject they are filming. Though you never do see the situation the other way around. Some unemployed female mooching off of her husband's overweight benefits. It's always a woman with some man half her size. He is always right there with some stupid looking grin on his face and never generally allows the weight loss to happen easily if at all. I have also seen a few episodes where the entire family is involved in actively screwing up the weight loss process.
On the other hand I do also understand and fully accept that there are men out there that like big women. One of my best friends in fact won’t accept anything less and he’s damn proud of it and most importantly, those two make up one of the single happiest couples I have ever seen.
This entire post is nothing but an opinion anyway. A very centralized one at that, it’s not like I have ever personally witnessed what life is like for any of the participants on this show when the cameras are off. It is just something that you pick up on having seen it myself where a female has a male dependent and he meets every definition of the word. The mannerisms are all the same among them, the “push and pull” kind of very conditional affection they tend to show. The more thrown around term for them is “narcissist” but that’s a very almost too common kind of male these days. Besides though, they aren’t all like that but there are also a few episodes in particular I could point out for reference.
At the end of the day, the show never fails to deliver on the end of each emotional roller coaster you go on with these weightloss journeys. Knowing all the while that these folks are most of the time about as uncomfortable as a human can be. Their behavior many times (most times) is like a spoiled toddler but you won’t dwell on that when you realize that they’re dealing with the loss of THE foremost coping mechanism in their life. It is very fairly compared to any other addiction, nobody likes dropping a habit even if it is killing them. These journeys though are a lot of the time sidetracked by the dependant of the patient for one reason or another.
Be it inadvertently overfeeding and enabling the insane choleric intake, or purposely sabotaging the craving mechanism by eating triple-bacon-cheeseburgers right in front of them, these dependents really have their own special way of derailing the proverbial wagon. Sometimes they do it even when they’re trying their best to help, for example, becoming homeless and having to move into a greenhouse in the middle of summer isn’t ideal for anyone. However, when you’re 600 plus pounds it’s just downright unacceptable and I think the last thing anybody in that situation wants is waking up to a presentation of a massive pancake breakfast complete with a full pound of bacon and sausage. It’s that sort of thing that makes me think, “nobody is that inconsiderate”.
I could go on and on about this topic for paragraphs and pages upon pages because just like every episode I have ever seen, it is a very broad spectrum. A care-taker is a care-taker but simply giving yourself the title isn’t going to change the fact that a dependent is a dependent just the same. These situations have obvious roles suited for the obvious person that needs to be in it, and not the other way around but common sense, I suppose, eludes some folks.