Doctor Tells 605-Lb. Woman 'Her Health is Her Responsibility' on 1,000-Lb. Sisters
Tammy Slaton’s goal is to lose enough weight to qualify for weight loss surgery — but at this point, her surgeon is concerned about her lack of initiative.
Slaton — one of the two title siblings on TLC’s 1,000-Lb. Life — goes to her bariatric surgeon, Dr. Charles Procter, to talk about what’s holding her back in her weight loss goals. Procter asks if her sister Amy — who let Tammy move in with her and her husband because she needs help with everyday tasks — is supportive of her weight loss.
“To a point, yeah. I just feel like she needs to be more…helpful?” Tammy, 32, says in this exclusive clip from Wednesday’s episode.
Procter is taken aback by Tammy’s response, asking how Amy, 31, could help more considering she’s already doing all of the cooking and shopping.
“She like, gets frustrated when I ask her to get me a drink or something like that,” Tammy responds.
Procter tells Tammy that she needs to be doing more herself, rather than relying on her sister.
“Well, part of this, and what I see when I see folks who are in your size range, is once you get there, you get more and more dependent on other people around you, and once that happens, next thing [is] you’re bed-ridden and next thing you know you’re depending on other people for every little thing,” he says.
“So honestly, I want to see you do these things for yourself,” he continues. “If you’re thirsty and you need something to drink, get up and get something to drink. I know it hurts. I know it’s going to be painful and sometimes feel like it’s not worth it.”
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Tammy, who weighs 605 lbs. and requires a walker to move around, counters that it’s hard to carry an open drink when she’s using her walker. But Procter says that she “needs to understand that her health is her responsibility.”
“I shouldn’t have to remind you. This is life or death, what I talked about last time, that wasn’t just to scare you. I hope it did, but it’s true. I don’t see you living much longer unless we do something about this,” Procter tells her.
Tammy and Amy, who weighs 406 lbs. at the start of the show, have tried to lose weight since middle school, but “nothing worked,” Amy previously told PEOPLE.
Their goal now is to lose weight and show that they can form healthy habits to qualify for weight loss surgery. They’ve since started on a low-carb, high protein diet, and began working out: Tammy likes to swim, and Amy enjoys dancing or going on walks with her husband.
1,000-Lb. Sisters airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m./9 p.m. Central on TLC.
