Elizzikra

That actually wouldn't surprise me. My husband's mother was pregnant with his younger brother during the mid-60's and her doctor gave her prescription diet pills (legal speed) throughout her pregnancy. At that time, no one thought they were harmful. Also at that time, children were treated by doctors much more as "little adults" rather than with the understanding we have now that kids are really different and their medical conditions can't be managed by just scaling down adult treatments. So it's not a huge stretch of the imagination to see a physician prescribing a "child's dose" of diet pills to an overweight 4-year-old with a family history of morbid obesity. I vaguely remember that show and this part of it - but the fact that they didn't uncover her "secret" doesn't mean there wasn't one to find. As I recall, she had no memory of her childhood after something like age 8 until her late teen years. I thought that, plus her morbid obesity, seemed the result of some sort of trauma. I do think that people who get to the size of Dr. Now's patients have something going on that goes beyond liking to eat and having little self control. I think that would get you to garden variety overweight. But to get to this level of morbid obesity - that just has to be about something more than a love of ice cream and fried chicken. So many of Dr. Now's patients stall in their progress until they get therapy and so many of them have trauma in their histories. I don't have a hard time believing that there is a psychological component to obesity at that level.

In their defense, she had been done with her coursework and "writing her dissertation" for something like 8 years at that point with little discernable progress... I am irrationally annoyed by the capital "R" in the middle of her name...

I had a friend who was ABD for 10 years but that was definitely pushing it (and she ended up not finishing). At the end of every year, she was always stressed that she the school would kick her out of her program. When her advisor retired that was pretty much the end of the whole gig. In her defense, it's hard to work full time and try to finish a dissertation, which is what my friend was trying to do. Her full time job was pretty demanding and then her dissertation was like another intense full time job on top of it.

It is - it's just not weight bearing exercise. But physical therapists will move a patient's limbs around to stretch muscles when they can't move them alone. But I take your point - she really can't do much physical activity at all. Forget dancing. She can't seem to even walk five feet from the kitchen to the family room without getting out of breath.

I'm old but my teenaged daughter bought me a popsocket for Christmas. I love it - didn't expect to. I also got the clip thing you can stick on your dashboard so you can slide the popsocket into it, thereby sticking your phone on your dash for navigation and such. It was one of the best gifts I got. I finally figured out what it was about the Glenn tree-hugging a tree photo that was bothering me so much. The way it's composed and staged, it reminds me of school pictures for preschoolers - where they cross their arms over a fencepost or whatever. Glenn looks like he's hugging the tree and it might be helping stand up a little. It's very odd...

It is? Seriously? I am woeful. What's next? "Orientated?"

I think Alyssa is adorable so I hate seeing her look like such a hot mess week after week. She's at the Women's March today in DC and I think she looks good!

At least she is an actual person and not a muppet or a cartoon character.

How would he know??? I agree. Merline and Candice's looks seemed totally unfinished - loose threads; the hem on the pants. They looked so messy. I didn't mind Melissa's dress (though it wasn't "fashion forward" whatever the hell that is supposed to mean). I thought Ari's dress was in poor taste largely because he took the sheer paneling/see through aspect much too far (having it just on the back would have been perfect - Isaac was right about that). But Ari and Melissa's looks were at least finished and clean. And can I just say that every time I hear Isaac's condescending "hi kids" I want to strangle him with his own cravat???

Or decide that Babs needs her "help" and she can't stand being away. Even though her mother appears to have recovered and is doing just fine. I know. I was joking about the side gig. Then again, maybe he is catfishing and he just isn't very good at it. After the Twitervention with him, maybe he will learn not to use his real name.

Yes - definitely not the right way to use the information and it clearly contributed to where she is now.

Merline. Whom I would have liked to have seen go home this week. I think hats are her trademark - I think she wears one every week. They also have The Row. From what i understand they are both financially and critically successfully in the fashion industry. They make money and have for many years and they have won CFDA awards. I actually like a lot of their stuff but it's more expensive than I can afford and I'm not model-sized. But objectively I think they make nice clothes. I think Ari is gorgeous but I don't think a dermatologist can help. I think the only thing that will clear up the acne is to stop taking the high-dose hormones. I think filming completed before the shitstorm started (or at least, the public shitstorm)...

Agree to disagree then. I worked in adoption for a long time and I think that secrecy does more harm than good. I think adopted people and their adoptive parents have a right to whatever information the adoption agency has about the birth family. There was a very different perspective, though, in the 60's around adoption information sharing. If the birth mother had been an alcoholic (and for the sake of argument, let's say she was an alcoholic who managed to abstain during her pregnancy so there was no risk of harm to the fetus), I wouldn't argue that the worst that would happen from not telling the adoptive parents would be that the kid grows up to be an alcoholic too.

None that we saw... Yes, but they're leftover from when our daughter was in Girl Scouts and a barbecue we had last summer. We don't break them out when we have guests for dinner. Maybe catfishing is his side gig over summer break? I can't decide if I think she is clueless or not but I do think that they love their daughter and they know that she is really, really unhealthy. I think it's got to be difficult for them to realize that there is a really good possibility that one or both of them will outlive her. And there is really nothing at all they can do for her until and unless Whitney accepts the reality of her situation and decides to change. It's got to be really difficult to watch your kid literally killing herself right in front of you, knowing that there is no reason at all that she can't choose to be healthy, and watch her time and time again make lousy choices. Meh - he does live pretty much rent-free in what looks like a pretty nice house. I know Whitney made him sign a lease and supposedly charges him rent but I think she said he pays late sometimes and sometimes not at all. Maybe Avi is just as good of a catfisher as Whitney is a dancer? Which is to say not particularly good at it at all. Little did we know at the time that Tom Cruise really couldn't handle the truth. She's an adult; they can't force her to go and she doesn't think she has a problem. And I think it was discussed on another thread that she has been in therapy for several years. So she is getting some sort of mental health treatment but it doesn't seem to be effectively addressing her weight and food issues.

I.Hate.That.Word... Because it's not a word??? I don't think they can sit correctly at a table. I think their stomachs are too big and their arms too short to reach the table when they are sitting up straight. Plus I'm guessing not too many chairs can hold a 600 pound person; they need a bed or a big armchair that you can't pull up to a table.

I had a capsule endoscopy (you swallow the little camera and it takes a billion pictures while it travels through your digestive system). The thing Janine had to swallow looked like it was about the size of the camera capsule. I didn’t have anything with it but water. Then again, they didn’t inflate it once it was in my stomach nor did it have a string so they could yank part of it out after it was inflated. So maybe they do need to chill you out? Then again, you’d want someone to be awake and alert so they don’t choke on it. I didn't find it all that unusual. Overweight people can still experience hunger. If her mother constantly had her on a diet, she probably was hungry at least some of the time. And as a child, I can see where she wouldn't have the verbal skills to express "I'm not satisfied with what I just ate" so she just goes to "I'm starving." I pretty much told my mother that I was "starving" every day before dinner when she wouldn't let me have a cookie... As for how Janine was affording things, I wondered that too. I wonder if maybe her family had money and she inherited? If she was adopted through a private agency rather than the public child welfare system, that would have been expensive, even in the 60's. Inheritance plus disability and maybe Medicaid - she could have an ok income.

I think it was good for the adoption agency to disclose what they knew of her birth parents’ medical history. It would have been better for them to give some context and help the adoptive parents deal with that knowledge in a more appropriate way but it was the 60’s. They didn’t do a lot of disclosure around adoption back then nor did they really know much about how to raise kids to deal with food and body image. I’m not sure we do much better on that count now.