Tonight on TLC their fan-favorite series My 600-lb Life airs with an all-new Wednesday, February 24, 2021, Season 9 Episode 9 and we have your My 600-lb Life recap below. On tonight’s My 600-lb Life season, 9 episodes 9 called “Michael’s Journey,” as per the TLC synopsis, “A lifetime of abuse and ridicule has left Michael anxious and afraid to leave the house. Now with the help of his devoted wife, he must follow Dr. Now’s program to keep from eating himself to death.”
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In tonight’s My 600-lb Life Michael Blair is forty-three years old. He doesn’t know his weight because he lost count and he’s been big for his age for as long as he can remember. Michael’s father left when he was very young. He and his mother moved in with his grandparents. His grandmother took it upon herself to keep Michael fed constantly. He came in about a hundred pounds when he was seven.
His weight continued to rise, and it got worse after he was molested by his pack leader. His pack leader tended to “pursue” the boys. He didn’t pursue Michael as much as he did the other boys because of Michael’s size and so Michael actively put on weight to keep this pedophile away from him. His mother eventually took him out of that situation, but by then, Michael came to depend on food for comfort and safety.
Michael’s life changed again after he became interested in Martial Arts. He started to get very active in the sport and it helped him with his weight. He came back under four hundred pounds because of Martial Arts. Michael even gained confidence. He became social and he met his wife Kimberly. His wife Kimberly has always been supportive of Michael.
She loved him when he was under four hundred pounds and she hadn’t cared when his weight went back up after they started having children. Michael gave up Martial Arts after their second son was born. He turned to food to handle his problems and it was clear he had problems stemming from his childhood. People who don’t deal with childhood trauma tend to be triggered by their own children and it wasn’t the kids’ fault.
It was probably Michael’s own doubt of how well he can parent that pushed him over the edge. Michael’s weight started going back up after he had kids and the problem only got worse after his accident. Michael was in a nasty car accident that resulted in scarring in his abdomen. He had been told at the time that he couldn’t get weight-loss surgery because of the scarring and so he again turned to food for comfort.
Michael is now so heavy that he needs his wife’s help in staying clean. She has to help him wash and powder because if he doesn’t get the help he tends to break out in rashes. Michael now states that everyday he gets to leave the bed on his own is a good day. He gets tired easily, but he still does his best to walk around the house and he eats his meals with his family.
Michael is too ashamed of his weight to do anything else with his family. He doesn’t go to their schools or hangs out in the park with his kids because he believes he’ll just embarrass them if he does. Michael’s self-hatred has even convinced him that he couldn’t lose the weight on his own. He doesn’t properly because he demands the fatter food and he doesn’t work out. He believes that only weight-loss surgery can help because he doubts what he could do on his own.
Michael pins everything on weight-loss surgery. His homes and dreams aren’t possible to him unless he gets the surgery and so he got lucky when he later met Dr. Now. Dr. Now doesn’t tell his patients that surgery is the be-all/end-all. He tells them that they have to do work as well and he makes sure that patients see a therapist if they continue to struggle.
Michael weighed himself for the first time in years because of his appointment with Dr. Now. He weighed six hundred and nine pounds and that’s what he figured he was. He always believed he was six hundred. Only he fears getting up to seven hundred and that’s what he was hoping to prevent when he made the doctor’s appointment. Michael told Dr. Now about the scarring.
He also told him that he suffers from agoraphobia as he doesn’t like going outside because he doesn’t like society and he doesn’t want to meet people. Michael was bullied as a child for being big. He never dealt with that or the sexual abuse and he chooses to instead shun society because he thinks he’s doing it before “they” shun him.
Michael’s self-hatred is why is he got so big. He was fine when he was younger because back then he felt confident and he only felt confident after he realized he was good at something. Michael shouldn’t have dropped Martial Arts. He shouldn’t have started demanding extra portions that he knows he shouldn’t be eating and which was a problem with his wife. His wife has had gastric bypass.
She does make healthy food, but she allows Michael leeway in his portion size and he’s able to convince her that he’s not full when the truth is something different. Michael eats so much because of his self-hatred. Not because he’s hungry. Michael claims to have tried out diets and he even had the nerve to tell Dr. Now that none of the diets work for him. And that was a big red flag to Dr. Now.
Dr. Now tells his patients that weight-loss isn’t magic. Michael has to control his portions and he has to start exercising again. Dr. Now said as much. He also told Michael that he wanted him to see a therapist. The good doctor realized fairly fast that Michael wasn’t going to get better until he finally saw someone about his childhood trauma.
So, Dr. Now made an appointment for him. He hooked Michael up with Dr. Matthew Paradise and Michael made sure to bring his wife with him. Kimberly went with him for support. She didn’t talk during his appointment because she knew it was about him and so Michael told the therapist about his abuse. He said after that incident with the pack leader he started to distrust every adult with authority.
It also convinced him that he shouldn’t be away from home. Michael was abused on a camping trip because his mother thought it would be good for him and she, unfortunately, turned out to be wrong. Her son was abused. Michael then used that incident to create a barrier for himself and Dr. Paradise picked up on that. The doctor said Michael is very smart.
He said he’s smart enough to convince everyone to have low expectations of him and so that’s how he’s been getting away with so much. It’s how he even convinced his wife that he needs the surgery rather than he wants the surgery. Michael was so enthusiastic about possibly becoming Dr. Now’s patient that he started to throw away all the junk food in his house and that should have been something he did a long time ago. With or without Dr. Now.
Dr. Now later performed an endoscopy on Michael. It was to check to see if he could even have weight-loss surgery and, while he was doing that, Dr. Now also checked on Michael’s hernia. The doctor found a very complicated situation in Michael’s abdomen. He does have extensive scarring and that plus the severe hernia could prevent Michael from having weight-loss surgery.
However, Dr. Now believes that if he can fix the hernia that he could use that in removing some of the scar tissue. The doctor told Michael after he woke up that he would have to lose a hundred to a hundred and fifty pounds before he could perform any time of surgery on him. This means Michael has to take dieting seriously. He also has got active again. He needs to leave the house to go for a walk around the block or something and that can help.
Michael also had to confront his trauma. He continued with therapy sessions and he did a writing exercise. He wrote a letter to his abuser. He released all of his anger and hatred and he told the man goodbye for the last time. Michael then burnt the letter to release himself from the past. It helped him to heal and that was good for him in the long run. Michael later had another appointment with Dr. Now.
He would have liked to have gone with his wife because she’s a great support to him and unfortunately she couldn’t go because she had to stay with the kids when previous arrangements fell through. Michael ended up going alone. It was the first time he’s ever been outside alone in years and that too was good for him because Michael has to regain some kind of independence.
Michael was weighed again at his doctor’s appointment. He was supposed to be losing a hundred pounds in the last three months and he actually lost sixty pounds and a half. It was great progress in spite of him not reaching his full goal. Dr. Now was pleased with what Michael did. He told Michael that it was a step in the right direction and he told him to continue what he was doing.
Michael needed to lose at least a hundred pounds before Dr. Now could fix that hernia. Michael was told this and it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He had hoped that what he did was enough and unfortunately it was because of the extensive damage in his abdomen. Michael returned home where he tried to maintain his current weight loss and unfortunately he had a moment where he spiraled a bit.
Michael focused on the negative things. Not the good things. He even snapped at his wife. She was just trying to be upbeat and help him with his agoraphobia, but it wasn’t what he wanted to hear at the time and so he snapped at her. Kimberly was very understanding. She knew that right then he needed silence and she gave him that. She gave him the opportunity to calm himself.
Michael was only snapping because he knew he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. He went in for another weigh-in. He had lost thirty-six more pounds and he was still short of meeting a hundred. Michael told Dr. Now at the time that it’s getting harder to lose the weight and he also said that he knew that was just an excuse.
Michael was given more months to lose weight. By Month 10, he started going out more with his wife to places and he also went back to Martial Arts. He was happy to return to the sport. It will help with his weight-loss and it taught him discipline as well. Michael was feeling so good that he decided to speed up his next appointment with Dr. Now. He saw the next month and he lost an additional thirty-something pounds.
He now has lost a hundred and thirty-five pounds. It was good enough for him that Dr. Now agreed to fix the hernia and repair the scarring. The doctor was going to perform another endoscopy first because he needed to get the lay of the land. Then there was going to be the other surgeries and if those surgeries go well then Michael might finally get his weight-loss surgery.
Michael’s weight-loss journey has been impressive. Dr. Now has faith in him that he can keep losing weight and so did Michael’s wife. Kimberly has been so supportive of him that Michael later did something nice for her. He arranged for a healthy picnic at the side of a lake and she was so surprised that she loved it.
THE END!