• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, March 5, 2024

New tales of the morbidly obese arrive on Wednesday with the 12th-season premiere of “My 600-lb Life” on TLC.

The show is just one of the returning series starting new seasons on TLC this month and last.

“My 600-lb Life” fascinates the TV Blog so much that I cannot help returning to it from time to time.

Each episode of the show has a Houston bariatric surgeon, Younan Nowzaradan M.D. (known as “Dr. Now”) working with a new patient whose extreme obesity -- at least 600 pounds plus more -- could soon prove fatal.

The patients show up at this Houston medical facility that looks like a one-time car dealership from all over the country.

Most of them are driven by someone else -- a friend or family member -- for hundreds of miles in acute discomfort from being wedged into a seat or riding like luggage in the rear of an SUV.

They come to Dr. Now in the hopes that he will perform bariatric surgery that will not only save their lives but also guarantee them hundreds of pounds in weight loss.

Their expectations of receiving an instant cure evaporate in the scenes when they meet Dr. Now for the first time (above photo) and he informs them that they must lose a hundred pounds in a month before he can approve them for surgery.

To do this, they must conform to a special diet he gives them that limits their daily intake to just 1,200 calories.

It is a very difficult number for anyone in the best of health to hit, much less people who are basically addicted to food and are accustomed to consuming daily calories well into the five figures.

These scenes, usually seen at the outset of each two-hour episode, are among the most riveting of the whole show as we witness these out-of-control eaters consuming multiple pizzas, cheeseburgers, all kinds of fried food, cakes, pies, you name it --  all in one sitting and numerous sittings daily.

One gets the impression in these shows that these surgery seekers are under the impression that they will not have to put in any work at all for their weight-loss dreams to come true. But this turns out not to be the case.

“My 600-lb Life” represents the TLC brand as much as any of its other shows -- namely, stories of diverse people who lead far different lives than ours.

Other shows returning for new seasons this winter on TLC include “Little People, Big World” (returned last month) and “7 Little Johnstons” (March 12).