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S07.E16 Lashanta's Story


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A mother of four, bed bound for two years, Lashanta relies on her kids to keep her clothed and fed.  Her last chance to break the cycle of food addiction that is killing her is to join Dr. Now's program, but it will take a village just to get her out the door. 

Please let the "village" include flexing firemen.  Alternatively or in addition, we will accept repeated cries of "Ow, my leg!"

This is the regular episode thread.  It will open after the US East Coast showing.

Original air date 2019.04.17 

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 I gave up watching after about an hour. I couldn't watch another unmotivated blob waste a chance to change her blob life. 

 On a completely unrelated note, Nate Berkus desperately needs a shave...yuck.

Edited by Swiss
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As ridiculous as she is, it’s hard not to like her. Maybe because the last episode I watched was Jeanne, who was SUCH a sad sack. 

I can’t believe her man left her because he worried about her losing too much weight. Haha. 

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23 minutes ago, newyawk said:

She has the most annoying voice I think I've ever heard on this show. Frickin' baby voice, irritating as hell. And I noticed she doesn't always talk like that, it's an extremely annoying affect. I figured she was also going to be another gigantic baby in every other way as well.  I couldn't believe she was ONLY 662 lbs. She looked like she was going to be at least 750.

I LOL'ed when she proclaimed how she was "so proud" about showing her friend how she was"being out and active" by riding through a fast food drive thru.

"I have to make a few tweaks to find the balance."  Because you have the medical degree and the expertise to create an effective weight loss plan, you uneducated idiot?

"Dr Now said I could eat chicken, so I'm eatin' my grilled chicken" and stuffing your fat face with fried chicken on the side and hiding some for later. 

"I'm not gonna last long, if I don't get the help I need." Like a doctor who prescribes you a 1200 calorie a day diet that you don't follow?

"I'm scared to talk to him (Dr. Now) because I don't want him to think I'm not serious about doing this." You mean you are? Doesn't show on camera.

She is one of the patients where I couldn't wait for her to get back to Dr. Now's office having gained 50 lbs or more, so I could watch him unleash that condescending sarcasm all over her stupid ass. Yeah. Jeremy, I don't think her losing too much weight is ever going to be an issue. 

I beg to differ with the poster above..I found it EXTREMELY easy to dislike Lashanta.

There was no reason for this person to have gotten on air. This was a pointless episode. 

It really WAS a pointless episode! Why was it 2 hours? No point. 

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7 hours ago, AVM said:

Lashanta's Mother summed up the episode with " Nobody wants a fat ass-ed daughter.."

She was the best part of this mess.

6 hours ago, Baby Button Eyes said:

Her voice reminds me of Butterfly McQueen aka Prissy from “Gone with the Wind”!  (A really annoying character)

That's who she sounded like! I was trying to place the voice.

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I had to go to bed halfway through and woke up to catch up on the end. Not a surprise that she failed so totally at Dr. Now's plan. Disappointing because I really do hope for all these people, but still unsurprising.  Lashanta takes responsibility for nothing and has zero motivation. She's still in that bed and she's going to die in that bed at this rate.

Edited by Hana Chan
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Is it just me or has this program simply evolved into nothingness?

I guess once they sign up these people, they have to figure out a way to get 2 hours of tv time from them. Even if there is absolutely nothing to show, TLC is committed to put something out. There have been a few success stories this year, but for the most part, it has simply been a lot of endless babble. 

Maybe they are running out of viable candidates. Shoot, I’d be happy if they changed it to My 500 Pound Life (or 400) if it meant we were actually going to see someone’s journey towards turning their life around. 

I used to look forward to Wednesday night, but no more. 

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3 hours ago, jacksgirl said:

Had it in but was not really watching. Any word on why she wore gloves all of the time?

During Live Chat several people suggested that when eating she didn't want to get her hands dirty because hand washing wasn't happening.

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7 hours ago, Baby Button Eyes said:

Her voice reminds me of Butterfly McQueen aka Prissy from “Gone with the Wind”!  (A really annoying character)

Her voice reminds me of Aint Nobody got no time for dat! 

Aint nobody got no time for a big fat assed daughter! 

Sadly it was a review of some of our society's biggest problems: teen pregnancy, high school drop outs, obesity, co dependency, black men in jail, multiple babies with different fathers, single parenthood, squishing etc.

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3 hours ago, KateHearts said:

My god, the simpering voice.  She doesn't even pretend to try, either.  And the life story: "I got pregnant, he abused me; we broke up.  I met someone else, I got pregnant; he cheated on me and we broke up."  And the current/ex on the show? "She's not fat enough. Count me out."

This show has turned into a whole bunch of nothing.  People who seem to think that just walking into Dr. Now's office reduces them to 100lbs.  People who are so "busy" with their lives of having truckloads of fast food brought to their beds that they can't deal with a diet right now.  People who manipulate, people who are delusional, people who don't even care that they are on a show about LIFE THREATENING OBESITY shamelessly order giant pizzas on camera.  It's all just a shit-show of ongoing dysfunction.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes to all of this KateHearts! That's a trend for this series, especially this season. And yet we will most certainly be treated to a WATN on her; just wait and see. The only reason I watch each entire episode is to share the misery, and sometimes cheer on a successful poundticipant, during the Live Chat. The comments are always hysterical and totally on point.

Edited by DC Gal in VA
Emphasis.
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7 hours ago, JessieCap said:

It really WAS a pointless episode! Why was it 2 hours? No point. 

Absolutely JessieCap, this episode didn't require two hours. Her whole "journey" could have been covered in half an hour, including commercials!

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I didn’t find her extremely unlikable like some did, but I really don’t see long term success in her future. At least her Louisiana apartment was kind of cute and clean.

Edited by WonTon
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3 hours ago, KateHearts said:

This show has turned into a whole bunch of nothing.  People who seem to think that just walking into Dr. Now's office reduces them to 100lbs.  People who are so "busy" with their lives of having truckloads of fast food brought to their beds that they can't deal with a diet right now.  People who manipulate, people who are delusional, people who don't even care that they are on a show about LIFE THREATENING OBESITY shamelessly order giant pizzas on camera.  It's all just a shit-show of ongoing dysfunction.

These people who have this attitude that if they can only make it to Houston, all their troubles will be over - just indicates (IMO) a form of mental illness.  How can anyone with any level of emotional intelligence believe that they can shovel anything they want into their mouths and just by getting their mammoth bodies hauled to Houston all will be fixed?

I was hoping to see some of the anger that her family/boyfriend hinted at to see how her voice changed.  I had visions of that Chris Farley SNL skit where he played an overweight teen eating French fries and when someone went to reach for one . . . "BACK OFF!!!!" in a Hulk voice.

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She lost weight finally because her boyfriend left her and she probably couldn’t get as much food supplied to her by her sons.

The boyfriend wanted her fat, probably even fatter, her sons wanted her to lose weight. 

For Dr Now to smell her from outside that ambulance, she must have really stunk. With the boyfriend gone,  I doubt her boys were wiping her ass.  God only knows what was hiding in the folds on her body. 

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13 minutes ago, Trees said:

And those stupid gold teeth made me absolutely, completely crazy.  What the hell??? Is she STILL somehow dealing drugs?  Got the kids in on her business?  That "neighbor" who brings food for sweaty bra money?  Who else wears gold teeth other than drug dealers?

Clearly the producers are seeking the very most outrageous people they can find.  Remember the motto of Reality TV makers: "If it bleeds, it leads".

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Giving them a bit of a break, it can be hard to tell who is really going to get with the program. Penny said all the right things in the beginning. She had a family worth getting out of bed for. Same with James. In my weight loss group, I never know who’s going to stick it out, and who’s going back to their addiction. 

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2 hours ago, Hana Chan said:

Disappointing because I really do hope for all these people, but still unsurprising. 

Me too!  I get so excited when I see them succeeding on the program.  I admire the work they put in.  I was told recently to lose 40 lbs. and I'm making bitch faces about what I need to give up!  To see these people - like our Optimism on a Stick Brittani -  really work so hard to transform their lives is an inspiration.

And then?  You have the past three weeks.  

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1 hour ago, suzeecat said:

These people who have this attitude that if they can only make it to Houston, all their troubles will be over - just indicates (IMO) a form of mental illness.  How can anyone with any level of emotional intelligence believe that they can shovel anything they want into their mouths and just by getting their mammoth bodies hauled to Houston all will be fixed?

I was hoping to see some of the anger that her family/boyfriend hinted at to see how her voice changed.  I had visions of that Chris Farley SNL skit where he played an overweight teen eating French fries and when someone went to reach for one . . . "BACK OFF!!!!" in a Hulk voice.

Loved that skit and really miss his talent. I think this is the one you posted about:

hqdefault.jpg

Edited by DC Gal in VA
To add a video.
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Dr. Lola looked like she could hardly wait to escape LaShanta's lair, which I assume smelled. I was surprised she even sat down. I was also LOLing at the fact that LaShanta's wig was like the Dollar Store version of Dr. Lola's.

She never actually moved, either-other than rolling around a bit on her bed, and then the EMT guys rolled her from one surface to another. Just totally passive. I'm no gambler, but I would put money on her never succeeding in standing up.

Interesting that none of her kids seemed to be involved in cleaning her.

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I think my favorite quote from the episode went something like this:

"I eat enough for three people! {pause} And bread."
 

If I were a betting woman, I think the bread would add up to enough food for at least two more people. But I like how she didn't classify that in the main part of her eating.

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1 hour ago, Trees said:

Clearly the producers are seeking the very most outrageous people they can find.  Remember the motto of Reality TV makers: "If it bleeds, it leads".

Heh...I was just listening to a podcast episode entitled "How scared should we be?" (the BBC's The Inquiry) and they quoted that line. (Then played a few clips of typical "scary" news reports from various local US news broadcasts.)

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4 hours ago, JJ1 said:

Is it just me or has this program simply evolved into nothingness?

I guess once they sign up these people, they have to figure out a way to get 2 hours of tv time from them. Even if there is absolutely nothing to show, TLC is committed to put something out. There have been a few success stories this year, but for the most part, it has simply been a lot of endless babble. 

Maybe they are running out of viable candidates. Shoot, I’d be happy if they changed it to My 500 Pound Life (or 400) if it meant we were actually going to see someone’s journey towards turning their life around. 

I used to look forward to Wednesday night, but no more. 

I feel exactly the same way you do!!  At this point I think we may conclude that the pool of appropriate candidates ready, willing and able to participate in this show is dwindling to just about ZERO!!  Maybe the show has run its course and Dr. Now should gracefully drift into retirement.  His son's production team will be faced with finding a new way to earn a living but, hey, that's life in a market economy!   It's about supply and demand and my belief is that they will receive residuals from the endless loop of past shows that will no doubt flood the airways of TLC for years to come.  The bottom line is that there is really no justifiable reason to keep airing "new" episodes with essentially no redeeming value to the viewer.  Simply forced BOREDOM!!

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16 minutes ago, Pepper Mostly said:

I suggest that anyone who has not read the live chat thread go do so at once. I was laughing so hard and hitting the "laugh" emoji I could barely keep up with the thread, never mind watch the actual show!

I'm usually about 4 pages behind. I read in one tab and comment in another, or if I want to respond to something I open the comment in a new tab and then reply to it. (Which is why I sometimes ask/answer questions that were already answered two pages earlier!) I wish I could temporarily change the default reaction to 'laugh'; it would save me half a second each time. Those half-seconds add up! 😛 

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2 minutes ago, pdlinda said:

The bottom line is that there is really no justifiable reason to keep airing "new" episodes with essentially no redeeming value to the viewer.  Simply forced BOREDOM!!

Agree.  I don't want to see a parade of failures.   I want to be uplifted and root for someone.  

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3 hours ago, iwasish said:

She lost weight finally because her boyfriend left her and she probably couldn’t get as much food supplied to her by her sons.

The boyfriend wanted her fat, probably even fatter, her sons wanted her to lose weight. 

For Dr Now to smell her from outside that ambulance, she must have really stunk. With the boyfriend gone,  I doubt her boys were wiping her ass.  God only knows what was hiding in the folds on her body. 

Wait what???  I didn't see the last hour yet.  Oh boy.

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4 hours ago, Hana Chan said:

I had to go to bed halfway through and woke up to catch up on the end. Not a surprise that she failed so totally at Dr. Now's plan. Disappointing because I really do hope for all these people, but still unsurprising.  Lashanta takes responsibility for nothing and has zero motivation. She's still in that bed and she's going to die in that bed at this rate.

But LaShanta rallied at the end, and managed a base hit in the ninth inning. She finally lost weight on her own, and was going to proceed to weight loss surgery after relearning to stand and walk in physical therapy.

2 hours ago, CatherineM said:

Giving them a bit of a break, it can be hard to tell who is really going to get with the program. Penny said all the right things in the beginning. She had a family worth getting out of bed for. Same with James. In my weight loss group, I never know who’s going to stick it out, and who’s going back to their addiction. 

That's true, I agree with this. And the show has to give all sorts of people a chance, not just the most intelligent with the best educations. But for the people who are obviously slower/less educated, they really need to give more training in the beginning (that poundticipants' boot camp) to understand what they must and must not do with their eating habits, and why. So many of them really seem not to understand that they can't compensate for some bad meals by working out with their hand weights, for example.

2 hours ago, Emkat said:

The way that she is always rubbing her legs is very weird/disturbing. 

I agree; LaShanta seems to enjoy burrowing her hands into the folds on her legs, and the camera liked to show it.

23 minutes ago, pdlinda said:

I feel exactly the same way you do!!  At this point I think we may conclude that the pool of appropriate candidates ready, willing and able to participate in this show is dwindling to just about ZERO!!  Maybe the show has run its course and Dr. Now should gracefully drift into retirement.  His son's production team will be faced with finding a new way to earn a living but, hey, that's life in a market economy! It's about supply and demand and my belief is that they will receive residuals from the endless loop of past shows that will no doubt flood the airways of TLC for years to come.  The bottom line is that there is really no justifiable reason to keep airing "new" episodes with essentially no redeeming value to the viewer.  Simply forced BOREDOM!!

I haven't found this season boring at all, although I did find LaShanta boring. To me she did not have much personality and was not a good choice for the show. I have found most of the episodes interesting, even when I did not like the poundticipant.

20 minutes ago, Carolina Girl said:

Agree.  I don't want to see a parade of failures.   I want to be uplifted and root for someone.  

There have been just a few failures so far this season, although several of the successes have needed three or four tries before they got with the program, really lost weight, and had their surgery. However, some of the successes may not be uplifting, and if we don't like the patients, such as because they tell lies and make excuses in the early months, then we may not be rooting for them.

Here is the breakdown to the best of my recollection:

Success:

1 - Octavia

2- Brianne

3 - Robin & Garrett

4 - Justin

5 - Holly

6 - Lacey

7 - Brandon

9 - Tiffany

10 - Destinee

12 - Aaron

13 - Kelly (made very good progress until her heart gave out)

14 - Annjeanette

16 - LaShanta (11th hour turn-around)

Failure:

8 - Maja

11 - Jeanne

15 - Angela

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2 hours ago, mmecorday said:

And a personality.

Heh, a lifetime ago I had to work on a Nate Berkus project and I could not agree more. There's not much there, there. 

This was one of the most bizarre episodes of this show. When they were starting out to Houston and she was in the van on the mattress, and they pull up to the drive-through to USE THAT COUPON, and she knows the woman working and is all, "Hey girl!" And proceeds to order more food than I had last week and acts like it's NBD she's all lounging on a mattress in a van. I don't know why, but of all the weird things on this show, that cracked me the hell up. 

And man, did she really meet her boyfriend while she was in the ER? I have a friend who always yells, "YET I'M STILL SINGLE!" and I'm always like, dude, it's just like on Intervention. Would you WANT to date any of these dudes? 

I cannot get the image of her peeing in the storage container out of my head. Of all of the disturbing things we've seen on here, her edging to the side of her bed to pee in a storage container about did me in, I don't know why...

Edited by Stiggs
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LaShanta's face looked different to me after she'd lost weight--and I don't mean because of weight loss.  The expression in her eyes and her overall affect seemed changed.  I wonder if she was using up through Munt 11?  If she were high during the first hour and a half of the show it might explain a lot, including that final tantrum.

She really paid a lot of attention to her makeup--I was waiting for her to use that plastic head to try out different shades of eyeshadow.  Her wigs were rough, especially compared to Dr. Lola's (who broke out her Lion's Mane wig for this episode).  I wondered if at first Dr. Lola thought LaShanda was mocking her baby voice.

I wonder what would have prevented LaShanda's pregnancy at age 13?  The baby's father was 16 and presumably knew about condoms.  I would guess that he wanted to father a baby as some kind of proof of manhood, except that he denied that the baby was his.  And maybe it wasn't--we can't know.  I have a lot of questions about LaShanda's backstory.  As someone in the live chat said, "I never prostituted myself" = "I was a prostitute."  I agree because why otherwise assume anyone would think you were a prostitute?  She has copped to exposing Tyrone (her oldest son) to things he shouldn't have seen when he was a child--I suspect prostitution was one of them.

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17 minutes ago, Mothra said:

LaShanta's face looked different to me after she'd lost weight--and I don't mean because of weight loss.  The expression in her eyes and her overall affect seemed changed.  I wonder if she was using up through Munt 11?  If she were high during the first hour and a half of the show it might explain a lot, including that final tantrum.

She really paid a lot of attention to her makeup--I was waiting for her to use that plastic head to try out different shades of eyeshadow.  Her wigs were rough, especially compared to Dr. Lola's (who broke out her Lion's Mane wig for this episode).  I wondered if at first Dr. Lola thought LaShanda was mocking her baby voice.

I wonder what would have prevented LaShanda's pregnancy at age 13?  The baby's father was 16 and presumably knew about condoms.  I would guess that he wanted to father a baby as some kind of proof of manhood, except that he denied that the baby was his.  And maybe it wasn't--we can't know.  I have a lot of questions about LaShanda's backstory.  As someone in the live chat said, "I never prostituted myself" = "I was a prostitute."  I agree because why otherwise assume anyone would think you were a prostitute?  She has copped to exposing Tyrone (her oldest son) to things he shouldn't have seen when he was a child--I suspect prostitution was one of them.

For some reason, the moment I saw her wig at the beginning, I knew this wouldn't go well. I have no idea why the wig was my big tip-off, but I just couldn't see success in that wig. 

And lordy, when a woman is telling a sad story about "doing what they have to" to support their kids, I usually assume stripping—which hey, strip away, I don't care.  But when she was like, "I never prostituted myself" I was like, "Wait, what did I miss? Who said she was a prostitute?" And then my mind wandered as to what she was doing that was so similar or close to prostitution that she felt the need to disclaim it, and then I was all, "oh, so she was a prostitute." Heh. Which, again, not a healthy life choice but I don't judge. Then again, I believe all of this conversation was happening shortly after she peed off the side of her bed and I still can't get over that. I was easily confused, lol. 

And her blase attitude about her son being in prison was alarming. But this whole episode alarmed me. 

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3 hours ago, sempervivum said:

Dr. Lola looked like she could hardly wait to escape LaShanta's lair, which I assume smelled. I was surprised she even sat down. I was also LOLing at the fact that LaShanta's wig was like the Dollar Store version of Dr. Lola's.

She never actually moved, either-other than rolling around a bit on her bed, and then the EMT guys rolled her from one surface to another. Just totally passive. I'm no gambler, but I would put money on her never succeeding in standing up.

Interesting that none of her kids seemed to be involved in cleaning her.

Lola seemed to have contempt for a patient a few weeks back who complained about growing up poor and the humiliation of food stamps. It seemed like Lola might have been one of the 45 million Americans who uses food stamps, but had made something of herself by becoming a therapist. In the same way, she seemed to have contempt for LaShanta for her uncontrolled child bearing, drug use, prostitution, bad parenting and morbid obesity.

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22 minutes ago, Stiggs said:

For some reason, the moment I saw her wig at the beginning, I knew this wouldn't go well.

I was thrown off as soon as I saw it as well, but it wasn’t “just” the wig, it was the contrived scenario that she actually wore it to sleep....yawn, roll over, wake up fetish-boy to fetch the piss bucket.

The crew might as well have been filming porn...

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1 hour ago, Mothra said:

I wonder what would have prevented LaShanda's pregnancy at age 13?  The baby's father was 16 and presumably knew about condoms.  I would guess that he wanted to father a baby as some kind of proof of manhood, except that he denied that the baby was his. 

In some areas of the south, it is considered a wonderful accomplishment to have as many children on the ground as possible, sometimes from many different women. 

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34 minutes ago, kicotan said:

I was thrown off as soon as I saw it as well, but it wasn’t “just” the wig, it was the contrived scenario that she actually wore it to sleep....yawn, roll over, wake up fetish-boy to fetch the piss bucket.

The crew might as well have been filming porn...

I love this post, even if it did make me throw up in my mouth a little bit, lol. 

Also, I was relieved when I realized her teeth were gold because I thought they were just really, really, really yellow. 

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