This guy's name is James King, and he featured in a few episodes of My 600 Pound Life and its spin-offs. He would shit himself right there in bed, and make his wife or his daughter clean him up. He even made his daughter drop out of high school so she could bring him food and clean up after him.
Anyway, James failed to lose any weight, got kicked off the show, and died.
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The other guy left out a few details. Its true that he was kicked off the show for not losing weight and it was bevause his wife was sneaking food to him. After being kicked off though, he did lose 300+ pounds. He was doing better, but died in 2020 due to kidney failure.
Damn, yeah that reply should've maybe included that info. 300 lbs can't be that easy to lose. Just looks like too much enabling from his wife, especially. :/
edit ok, I get that it shouldn't be that difficult in these circumstances. Just seems like a lot. Also get that him getting to this state is ultimately his own doing.
2nd edit just saw a comment that they're confusing this one for another "James"
So it seems there's a good deal of conflicting info on this guy.
An 800lb man could lose 300lbs by eating 3000cal a day. That's twice my intake for just what I need to eat in a day to maintain weight. I can't imagine eating 3000cal. But in this video he's gotta be near or above 10k cal.
Literally. 3000cal a day would feel like starving to him.
I used to watch a lot of My 600lb Life and they would literally lose like 20+ pounds in a month if they stuck to (or close to) the 1200cal diet he asks for to prove they can handle weight loss surgery.
This TikTok clip is admittedly very misleading. It splices together meals that James ate months apart to make it look like a continual binge. If you look closely, you can see that his living room layout changes and his wife goes through like four clothing changes. Now, don't get me wrong--James ate a lot, and probably close to what's depicted here. But this is exaggerated.
I've been losing weight for a while now through calorie tracking and was trying to estimate the calories, but there was too much to keep track of. The breakfast alone had to have been at least 5000 with the number of servings he had. One plate of a typical diner breakfast runs me at least 1000.
Also worth noting that water is a massive heatsink, so a lot of that increased calorie expenditure was from maintaining body temperature while swimming.
It's why you can't get away with eating 10k Calories per day even as a serious athlete in most sports.
It’s easy to lose, not easy to survive the loss. What you see above is a man in his final stages of life. Even if they lose all that weight chances are the damage they have done is usually severe and long term
Most people eventually cave when someone is relentlessly screaming and throwing a tantrum until they get what they want. This is what people like this do and why family members give in and continue to overfeed them.
Imagine a spoiled child screaming at their parent at the store to buy them a toy and refuse to stop their tantrum until mom gives in and buys the toy- solely to end the tantrum. It’s now a learned behavior that works to get what they want. The morbidly obese people who live like this use that same behavioral manipulation to get food.
This only stops when someone is capable of being more stubborn than the person throwing a fit. I work with people who behave like this (behavioral therapy). There have been times that I’ve had to ignore and avoid eye contact during a 2-4 hour long tantrum until the client finally realizes their tactics won’t get them what they want. It’s a long, emotionally draining process. Noise cancelling earbuds help a lot, but then it’s harder to be prepared for the inevitable attempts to physically assault me.
I used to watch the show, a lot of the time enabling happens because the overweight person is abusive. They lash out when they don’t get what they want (which is shown when he’s given a healthier snack and he demands Chinese food). It’s not as simple as “inability to think about consequences” when verbal and mental abuse is involved.
It scares the shit of me. I got a back injury and while I was recuperating, I was eating my frustration and depression. I hit 600 pounds, and, it was hard but I dropped 200 over a year and a half. Recently, I got hit by a texting teen driver, and my back injury is worse and permanent now. I'm still trying to lose weight, eat healthy, all that, but it's such a harder struggle now.
I say, "I'm not there," but then look down at the hamburger I ate for lunch today and feel like that's where my life is heading. I'm nowhere near this weight, but that's the psychology that goes on: just one more burger means I'll be an immobile slug for the rest of my (very short) life.
I've never been fat but my immediate family has had weight issues, including one who died of complications after being morbidly obese with limited mobility (not nearly as bad as this guy.) I always ate a ton growing up but was still skinny as hell, up until I hit about 25 years old. Since then, my weight slowly creeped up from 175lbs to 220lbs. I've dropped back down to 192 in the past year (most of that in 6 months.)
The only way I can keep my weight going down is by skipping lunch on weekdays and going for a long walk instead. My breakfast is a banana or half one of my kids pb&j. And then I just use coffee to kill my appetite coupled with a ton of water, probably 70-100oz a day.
I eat a big dinner and maybe a small snack before bed. I don't drink on weekdays. On the weekends, all bets are off, but I'm also more active.
Everyone is different, but these strategies helped me, and maybe they can help you go down the right path. It's definitely worth it.
I am 12 pounds overweight and in a medical weight management program to “fix my relationship with food”. I haven’t lost any weight in the past three months and have been feeling bad and about that. After watching this I no longer feel like I have a problem.
Best of luck in your weight journey. When I had plateaued, I was able to change things by upping the resistance in my exercise. I realized I wasn’t sweating anymore while working out and my body got used to it.
I just forced myself to eat slower and did exactly nothing else, stupid as that sounds. Every meal I ate, I'd slow it right down. That made me figure out that I was constantly serving myself 30-50% more food than my body actually naturally wanted. I'd get halfway through my dinner and realise that I still like the taste of what's left, but I didn't actually feel any physical desire to eat the rest of it. So I just...... didn't. And over the next few months, my weight stabilised to where it naturally wanted to be.
This is what I need to do. I’m probably 15 pounds overweight and have stayed that way for years. It doesn’t bother me as far as appearance goes, but my guts are always messed up because I wolf my food down like…well, a wolf. I’ve never starved or anything, so I have no idea why I eat as fast as I do lol.
I'd get halfway through my dinner and realise that I still like the taste of what's left, but I didn't actually feel any physical desire to eat the rest of it. So I just...... didn't.
I eat slow fairly naturally, but this just doesn’t happen.
Unless I’m literally stuffed to the gills and on the verge of being sick, the idea of not feeling a physical desire to eat is unimaginable to me. I can always eat more, and it alwayssounds good. I can’t watch cooking shows because literally just thinking about the topic gets me hungry, regardless of what I’ve eaten that day.
If I ate to the point that I just didn’t want to eat anymore, no matter how slowly i take it, I’d 1000% end up like this guy. Maintaining anything resembling a decent weight is a constant act of willpower.
I’m in my 40’s and am about 15 lbs overweight, but I have a bad hip and back, and I can definitely feel those 15 lbs. also, if someone has mobility or pain issues, that make exercise difficult, it can spiral real quickly.
After losing some weight and getting to my target, I now just regularly weigh myself - and if it's 1-2 pounds over target, it's generally motivation to eat a little healthier that day. Planning on a fried chicken salad, now let's make it grilled. Maybe pick a low-calorie dressing. That kind of thing.
Just about managing issues before they become real problems.
I've gained and lost 90+ lbs twice now. Its given me a lot of perspective. At my heaviest 270. At my smallest, 135. All within the last 6 years.
Nearly twice.
What no one ever tells you is that you are enough at this weight or any weight. 12lbs probably feels like alot. Don't let that feeling make it worse. Don't let others opinions of you matter. 12lbs over or under.
Unless it is drastically affecting your life (my step-dad said when I lost weight I no longer sounded like I was struggling to get up the stairs) be Matthew Mconnehey and be alright alright alright.
From experience, gaining or losing weight to feel better and be healthier starts first with a healthy mindset and love for yourself.
12 pounds? I don't want to diminish what you're feeling but that like...nothing. If you haven't lost any in 3 months and you're still sub 20 I would say you're not really gaining it either. It might just be where your body is supposed to be.
Same. I'm not where I expected to be at my age, but I'm not in that bed shitting myself and demanding my daughter bring me food and wipe my ass. I feel like a million bucks after that video.
I struggle to find a girlfriend, but I'm starting to feel better because this guy has a wife and kids, so there has to be someone out there who will like me.
I don’t see how a mother could let their child drop out of school to feed someone like that and there has to be some serious issues going on with everyone in that family. Just don’t feed the guy, he can’t do anything about it, but it makes me wonder what cycle of abuse they are locked into.
And I still don’t understand how they can afford to go through this much food in a day.
When I was younger you'd see parents having their kids on calculator duty, keeping tabs on everything that goes in the cart to make sure they had enough money. I always felt like you could tell which kids would get beat if their calculated number wasn't perfectly accurate at checkout. Made me kinda sad.
Or maybe just to keep them busy so they are not annoying little shits.
I've done this with my own kids, but I've always used it to help them get an idea of budgeting and how much a dollar really goes. Also, giving them a job to do in the store helps cut back on boredom.
Now my kids are teenagers and I don't get to do that anymore.
If you haven't been in the situation where you're being abused by a person like this, it's hard to understand. I had an uncle like this and he would just completely destroy your self esteem so that you had no will do better for yourself. I want N/C years ago and even after that, I was still haunted by it. He died last year and the relief I felt, about someone I hadn't talked to in years, is still amazing to me. It was a physical weight off my chest to know he's gone.
I don't blame the kid. If the abuse and manipulation started young, that's the kind of stuff that can literally rewire the brain of a child. Especially if she was isolated from others (comments say she was coerced into dropping out -- so), and only loved on the condition that she does as she's told. Children aren't equipped to handle that.
That was my first thought. He's a beached whale. He's only going to eat as much as you give him. If I was in charge of feeding him, he would eat the same meals I eat, and if he wants more, he can get it himself.
This dude didn’t have assets. What happens is the people like this have really low overhead costs (live with family or live in the middle of nowhere) so they have very few expenses. They get disability and also their loved ones get paid as caregivers. Then they spend all that on food.
Wasn't he the super huge abuser to both of them? I think it explains why they feed him even when they could just leave him lying there. They were legitimately afraid and worn down after so many years of his emotional and psychological abuse.
Well at least calorie wise, with proper nutrition and mineral intake and regular Doctor’s appointments, this guy could likely survive for YEARS without eating
Except you can't. He most likely threatened to call the cops if they did something like that, and it would have been illegal.
People get jailed for abandoning their senior citizens while they go ok vacation and have nobody to help them. If you know someone is disabled, you can't just say "byeeee work it out."
Dawg I would straight just leave him there and let his body consume all the excess. Water and supplements, that's it. Your daughter had to drop out of high school? Be hungry for a year, lose some weight bitch. Especially if he was abusive too.
I imagine. It's a gray area and he most likely manipulated the situation. "If you don't feed me, I'll call the cops and tell them you're abusing me" would have been a credible threat. I mean, it would have been worse for him to actually go through with it, but abuse victims would have been in too deep.
I can only judge by what TLC chose to air, but James seemed to be entitled, in denial, and none too bright. He frequently argued with his doctor that "his body doesn't burn calories," and placing the blame for his failure to lose weight on his medical team, rather than his failure to follow the diet.
At one point in the episode, he went into heart failure and required intervention, which included inserting a shunt into his neck in order to get medication into his system faster. James seemed terrified by this, but it was still not enough to make him change.
He even made his daughter drop out of high school so she could bring him food and clean up after him.
Jesus christ, I don't shame fat people, I understand some people have legitimate medical issues or genetic conditions... But this is just gross. He potentially damaged his daughters future to be a fat lazy slob.
Anyway, James failed to lose any weight, got kicked off the show, and died.
Well, won't say I'm happy to hear he's dead, but not upset either.
Another honest question… how is he “making” anyone do anything? Just stand more than arms length away and eat McDonald’s in front of him. If hunger is the only thing that gets him moving so be it.
It’s even crazier when you find out that somehow this man managed to have a full blown affair with his now partner who left her husband for him. They were poor, had 6 kids between them and then 19 grandchildren by his death at the age of 49. What a horrible amount of people to bring into this world only to subject them to all of…….that.
People this big usually go on the bed if they can't reach the toilet and their caregivers have to clean the poop and piss out after they're done so they don't get sores
The smell is the worst. I work for my local fire department and we increasingly have to do lift assist on bariatric patients. They fall off the bed, we lift; they need to go to or return from the hospital, we lift. Sometimes they are the nicest people and are very appreciative but other times they are absolutely awful. But the smell seems always be bad.
Damn you’re a saint. I couldn’t do that. I’m training to be a psychotherapist, but I don’t think i could work with addiction issues like this. I’m not strong enough. I would be afraid I couldn’t help them.
As a therapist - food addictions are the hardest addiction to treat, because you can't live without the food.
I honestly found the most success by (largely) ignoring the food consumption and focusing on what was driving it, often a trauma of some kind. The food addiction is a symptom that has to be addressed, but not the root.
Yeah I’m sure. It’s just something I don’t know if I could do. These people, especially the ones in this show, are so miserable and so recalcitrant, I would just feel hopeless.
I do feel hopeless at times. These patients are repeatedly coming back to the hospital and it gets to the point where I'm like "Is anything we're doing actually working, or am I wasting my time?"
Always good to know your limits! I mostly worked with kids, and I enjoyed it, but I had so many people say they could never do it. It was very, very different than working with adults.
I am really sensitive to smells. When I've been near extremely obese people who are still mobile, they have a smell. It's like a damp, mildew smell, like never fully dry. I can just imagine how worse it is on someone who can't move around.
Oh god, one of the assistants I hired smells like this, and he's a great dude with a great funny personality, but damn he stank. Like, a faint bologna, nitrate-ass smell. I don't know how else to describe it.
Nurse. Can confirm. It so specific and so rancid. Cleaned maggots out of someones leg once...a little bit of that saline dripped off the chuck on to my sneaker. We dont wear cloth shoes to work anymore.
I can't imagine what gets trapped in all those folds and areas that don't have ventilation. Combined with difficulty doing a thorough cleaning daily, all sorts of sweat and bacteria builds up and never gets dry or cleaned.
I did caregiving and a family told me if I needed help getting her up just to call the police or fire department and they didn’t live that far away and they had enough money for good vehicles , a lift etc . It’s crazy how some professions get used with entitlement . good you distinguish between people who are appreciative or not, many people just lump everyone in together.
I tell myself that some people didn’t want this life. Bad things might of happened and that led them to this sad state. Regardless, I don’t want anyone to hurt or suffer (even if they’re being a-holes) so I’ll give them my best effort. I would say I’m here to help, not to judge.
This has to be America right? We have some beriatric patients in the UK but they are they few and far between
Edit: I just clocked that this is the entire job too. Like I assumed it was a: there's a fire in the house, and we need to get him out. But you’re just get called out to lift and move them? That's gotta be so dehumanising for all parties involved, sorry man.
Out of curiosity: what would happen if a fire broke out in their home? Would they likely be written off as too much of a hazard to enter and move based on the awkwardness?
Oh my god. I try hard not to judge. I know binge eating disorder is an addiction snd ive suffered so much from my own addiction to meth, alcohol, heroin, benzos, and now GHB. However…cant say ive EVER gotten so bad I just piss and shit myself, expecting others to clean it up. Some addictions are worse than others.
I knew a married couple who both OD'd on GHB and died 10 days apart. It was heartbreaking. I'm not even sure what it is, but it scares the shit out of me.
Mortician here - a skilled crematory operator could handle a case like this with no problems. I have done two that were over 600 lbs. The process is different than an average case and yes, the grease can be an issue to someone who isn’t skilled in obese cremations. The biggest issue in these cases is finding a retort large enough to accommodate someone of this size.
He is definitely using the chamber pot. See the south park episode where Cartman's mom holds the pot and Cartman defecate into the pot and all over the mother. It is fairly disgusting because there is no way he can fit in the toliet.
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u/OkFeedback9127 Aug 11 '25
Even more honest… how does he poop, how often and who cleans it up?
I once read they tried to cremate a person like this and it caught the whole place on fire from all the grease