My 600-lb Life exclusive: Holly Hager shares her failed first weight loss surgery

On My 600-lb Life, Holly is readying for weight loss surgery again. Pic credit: TLC

On our exclusive clip from TLC, My 600-lb Life shares the story of Holly Hager, a woman who topped over 600 pounds by the time she was 30 years old.

In our clip, Holly recalls how food ‘was another comfort to her” as she recounts the failed relationship she endured for ten years.

Holly explains how she had huge ups and downs with her weight loss journey.

She says: ‘Being in another situation where I didn’t feel safe, food was yet again another comfort to me. And my weight got up to around 600 [pounds] by the time I was thirty. “

“At that point I finally decided that my life was getting so bad that I had to do something or just wasn’t going to last much longer.”

Her personal life and romantic problems seemed to drive the weight gain.

She says: “My first husband, he was the first guy I had trusted. And I felt like he had betrayed that trust with how he had treated me for ten years…so I left him and got weight loss surgery. I wanted to take my life back and finally lose all the weight so I had my stomach stapled. And for the year after that I really started to lose weight for the first time in my life.”

But the good news and the progress was short lived.

She says: “And at first the surgery worked and I got down to 319 pounds and I was really excited because I was doing well. I was thirty-two then, so it was almost twenty years since I was down that low. “

The clip shows a picture of Holly with a short hair cut and looking pretty good, but this victory began to reverse.

She adds: “But that is as far as my weight loss went. Because after I started to struggle with money and began to eat again, eating when I was full. I ended up busting my staples and back in the 500s again by the time I was thirty-three.”

Now that Holly already has experienced one failed weight loss surgery, she must totally change her eating habits, and like so many on this heart-wrenching series, get to the root of the childhood issues that continue to haunt her.

The official logline from TLC explains the horrific past details of her life and the episode progression:

“Holly Hager grew up with well-intentioned parents who worked all the time to make ends meet, but the tension of just barely staying afloat has a way of wearing tempers thin, and Holly as a young girl never felt the security of a safe, stable home. On top of that, Holly’s parents were Christian and believed in “turning the other cheek,” and as a result Holly never felt she could go to them with her problems. So instead she turned to food. When Holly was raped as a 16 year-old, she turned to food, and later when she married a man whose PTSD made him abusive, she turned to food. This propensity to use food as an emotional coping strategy led to the failure of Holly’s first weight loss surgery, which at first helped her to lose weight, but ultimately didn’t take.

Like many stories on this TLC series, there is a happier and brighter future ahead for her, but it will take work on her part.

In the episode, Holly reveals she has a new fiancée, Ray.

But to get to that happy ending, Holly’s weight now must be dealt with as Ray is acting as her carer.

Therapy and an intervention with Dr. Nowzaradan will be her only hope to begin anew.

Tune in tonight to see if Dr. Now can help Holly get a grip on her eating habits so she can salvage her relationship with Ray.

My 600-lb Life airs Wednesdays on TLC.

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April Neale

April is an accredited entertainment writer, interviewer and television critic. She is a current member of the Television Critics Association (TCA), Gay and Lesbian Entertainment... read more

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