Thrifty

You can feel sympathy that the sum total of all experiences in her life has caused her to be this way. It's not really sympathy for the person, but sympathy for the fact that her soul is so poisoned that it led to such a doomed existence.

That sounds difficult to prosecute. I don't know that I would want people worrying about going to jail for feeding someone non-poisonous food. I feel like the first scenario is active neglect and withholding of a basic human need, and would be prosecuted as "criminally negligent homicide". It's also a malicious act. The enablers who overfeed these patients are doing it because the patient is verbally abusive and the enabler is a beleaguered and tired person caught in a bad place. Most people don't like conflict, and would sooner appease a hostile person than try to negotiate with that person. Therefore, prosecuting a person who fed another person to death would be kicking a person while he's down. You may disagree, but I think the public and a jury would not. It's a losing proposition for any prosecutor.

I don't know where it cut off for you, but the last scene was Danielle and her children (or it might have been both of Lisa's kids and all the grandchildren) visiting her at the apartment in Houston. The presence of the grandchildren brought about the only pleasantness you'll ever see out of Lisa. Danielle was being the sort of strict you would have seen earlier in the episode. Sort of this anger laced rhetorical inquiry on how Lisa's weight loss was going. Lisa swore she would do it "the Lisa way", but you know that's not going to have results. Then it just kind of ended.

I knew it was gonna be a rough episode as soon as she was making all that noise when being loaded for medical transport. I think this was the first episode in which they didn't even cover the entire year. I still found it kind of sad. I always want to see the patients succeed, but Lisa is so fundamentally broken that she's doomed. Most patients at least try, even if they falter at first. Lisa's pretty horrible, but it saddens me that she is that way and the weight gain is a byproduct of it. She reminds me of Ricky from the documentary "The Man Who Ate Himself To Death". He wailed a lot about how much he needed help, but never put in any effort. Eventually he died fat man after his wife had enough and left him.

Yes, but have you heard the pittance they give to participants on My 600 Pound Life? I would be skeptical of a network that tightfisted ponying up the money for a big trip like this.

That's pretty common though. I've heard a lot of TV creators say that. Lots of praise can be swept away by a small bit of negativity.

From reading a lot of positive comments on a Youtube video of hers, I think the people who admire Whitney just enjoy having their own poor lifestyles validated. Think about it. Being fat sucks, and losing weight is hard. More generally, changing yourself away from bad habits is hard. If you don't want to do that because it's hard, the next best thing is to stay the same (which is easy), and demand everyone else change. I think a lot of Whitney's fans are proud of her for doing that, and use her as a role model. Probably not all of them. There are probably some fit people who have other motivations.

One time, after a day at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, NJ, I went to the outlet mall down the road. There was a Big and Tall store there with some of the most amazingly huge clothing I have ever seen. T-shirts that went up to XXXXXXXXXXL (10X). Pants with a 70 inch waist (maybe the pants weren't THAT big... it's been a long time). That was in 1999, when the Internet and online shopping were still in their infancy. I imagine the options are a lot better today.

This episode title gives me a headache, because of the dual and contradictory meanings of "Aloha".

To play devil's advocate for a moment here.... Whitney faces a lot of negativity*, and she puts herself out there a lot. I can't blame her for having a short fuse. *not that it isn't deserved

I really wish Whitney could succeed and slim down too. But the first step to recovery from anything is admitting that you have a problem. And it doesn't seem to register that she even has a problem. It's like a guy with 15 DUIs and cirrhosis of the liver that insists he doesn't have a drinking problem. I mean, she knows she's fat, but she doesn't think that's a problem. She thinks the problem is other people not accepting her as she is, and PCOS. I feel like she probably has a desire to be skinny, but it's too faint for her to do the hard work required. And I fear that won't change until she hits rock bottom. Right now she is surrounded by enablers, with her real life friends and the TV show. I'd like to think that the end of the show would help, but really with social media being what it is, she can sustain the adulation that encourages her indefinitely. I don't know that anything less than her becoming completely immobile will spur her to change.

I loved the All Fruit gag. Kinda didn't like them explaining the joke. But Peter was right that it was a lot funnier knowing the reference going in. I remember that ad from the early 90s. When my brother saw the guy who say "please pass the jelly" he had said "It's President Clinton!"

I just came out of the bathroom at work, and I noticed the doors on the stalls were kinda narrow. Room for an average sized human, though I had to fold my arms tight against me. I wonder if someone like Whitney would even fit. She must use the handicapped stalls in public bathrooms.

One thing I noticed is there is a high volume of cheering for Whitney in the comments. A lot of people say "she is trying to be fit and healthy!" That's clearly not true. Do you suppose maybe these people are watching the early episodes when that was somewhat true?

I was in WW too for a while. That's where I learned the cookie "rule". Also, there was "Food taken for medicinal purposes, such as ice cream for a sore throat, doesn't count." Ugh. I couldn't get through more than a minute of that. Did Whitney just try to elicit sympathy by comparing her being fat with incurable physical deformities? You can lose weight. You can't regrow a lost leg. You can't fix disfiguring scar tissue.

The bigger you get, the more energy it takes to maintain basic living functions. So your resting metabolism increase. It's almost like the bigger you get, the more food you have to eat to continue gaining. Like it almost becomes a challenge to keep it up. Your stomach gets bigger, which makes you require more food to avoid hunger pangs. Also you can eat more without feeling ill. So that's gotta help. Still, in the beginning of a weight loss effort it's pretty easy to lose weight because your metabolism is so high that just putting in an ounce of effort will burn off the weight.

I saw an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 called "Attack of the Eye Creatures". Throughout the featured movie, the characters consistently refer to it being nighttime, even though it is very obviously day. Maybe that's what TLC is doing. Maybe when you see her in obvious bright light conditions, it is really 1:00 in the morning. I've lost at least 160 pounds since 1997, if you only count the weight I've lost and don't deduct the regained weight from those numbers.

Everyone knows that a cookie you break has no calories. When you break it, all the calories fall out.

I feel like that homophone could cause trouble if you use that term verbally.

Well it worked on me. I went to KFC just yesterday.

I don't think they ever resolved that plot line about the stolen cures. It must have been one of the radicals in the bioterrorist cell that attacked Seattle. I hope they find a cure, and I hope the CDC is working full force on this.

I've been seeing that with a lot of my favorite shows. What a drag. But I guess I wouldn't expect regular programming to try and compete with the Olympic.

Anyone know when the next new episode is? I thought I saw something about a followup on that ice cream parlor, but now I can't see anything in TV Guide or anywhere.

Those awful Verizon commercials with Thomas Middleditch. He seems so annoying and arrogant.

It happens sometimes, but it's pretty rare. For most religious people, their faith is an important part of their life and it would be nice to find a partner of the same faith, but it's usually not a dealbreaker if that partner isn't.