On tonight’s My 600-lb Life, the story of Julius “JT” Clark is told, and it is so incredibly sad to hear.
JT relies on his girlfriend Jessica to do most everything for him, and this Claremore, Oklahoma native had to make some drastic changes to keep from dying prematurely.
He needed a “constant supply of food in his life” and also said, “eating is better than sex for me,” in the Wednesday night episode.
He added: “I go to sleep and wait for her (Jessica) to get back with what I need…I hate when Jessica asks me to carry the groceries in.”
Jessica explained on camera that she worried about him, but she enabled his overeating. She left boxes of pizza by his bedside for his breakfasts and bought fast food and candy by the bags for him to eat every day.
“Anything with sugar is my big weakness,” he explained. Peanut Butter cups are his favorite and he shared he cannot get enough of them.
The backstory of his trauma began when he learned his parents were drug addicts. His parents neglected their three kids, and the family situation became dire.
“Me and my siblings were on our own,” he said. At age 10, he was fending for himself. At age 13, he weighed 300 pounds. By age 18, he weighed over 500 pounds.
He admitted to putting away five or six whole pizzas plus breadsticks and desserts daily. He weighed over 600 pounds by age 22. Then, a health crisis erupted as a large mass was forming on his leg; it was lymphedema.
Even though a doctor told him he would be dead by 31, he kept eating. By age 25, he went on disability, receiving government payouts.
He cruised into his 30s overeating, and knowing the handwriting was on the wall, his breathing was labored, he could not wash properly and felt his life was slipping away.
“I don’t think I have another year in me,” he said in the episode. It was time to make a drastic change.
TLC describes the episode:
J.T. Clark is almost 900 lbs with a lymphedema mass on his leg that weighs over 100 lbs by itself, and despite how hard this makes it for J.T. to walk anymore, there’s nothing he can do to slow down his eating habit, because food means too much to him; it is his whole purpose in life. Knowing he needs help before he eats himself to death, J.T. travels with his girlfriend, Jessica, from Oklahoma go to see Dr. Now, but the strain of travel takes a toll on his body, and he is forced to stay in the hospital in Houston to get better, where Dr. Now puts him on a controlled diet. But without the foods J.T. likes to eat, his behavior becomes truculent and angry, and his unhappy behavior taxes his relationship with Jessica to a breaking point.
Where is JT Clark now?
SPOILER ALERT: He is smaller and healthier!
As we watched the episode, it was an upsetting series of events with JT initially hospitalized and then put in a rehab facility in Houston. At that point in his journey, his weight was not budging, and Dr. Now disliked his negative attitude, noting he was also cheating on his prescribed diet.
But after all the lectures from Dr. Now, JT lost close to 300 pounds — his eight-month weigh-in clocked him at 619. This is good, but he was still not eligible for weight loss surgery.
Things turned for the better as Dr. Now told JT he was finally eligible at the 10-month mark and that he needed to drop 75 more pounds.
The good news was he met the marks and got the surgery; all made quite tricky by the massive lymphedema they had to strap to the surgical table.
After the weight loss surgery went well, Dr. Now was convinced JT was on the right path and is thinking straight despite all the flack he gave him earlier in the weight loss journey.
By the end of the My 600-lb Life, JT shared he is “just barely in the 400s” at 491 pounds, and he was promised lymphedema surgery, and this will shave off another 100 pounds putting him into the 300’s, which is astounding considering he was over 900 pounds initially.
Fans have to wait until TLC, and JT Clark is ready to reveal the weight loss he has made, as Julius “JT” Clark is probably one of the biggest success stories for TLC.
Until he posts on social media, and we can only surmise that the gastric surgery went very well, and his lymphedema surgery took the biggest obstacle to his mobility out of his way. We are pulling for JT to succeed.
My 600-lb Life airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on TLC.