My 600-Lb Life: Whatever Happened To Tammy Patton

As captivating as it is to watch the extreme weight loss journeys unfold on My 600-lb Life, sometimes the endings are, well, less than satisfying. That’s because the stories of the morbidly obese individuals featured on the show are often not wrapped up well by the conclusion of each episode.

So viewers are left wondering, what happened to them? Were they able to get the surgery and eventually reach their weight goal?

At the start of her My 600-lb Life episode (which premiered March 17), Tammy Patton of Wichita Falls, Texas, was 41 years old and around 600 pounds. “Every day I wake up desperate for change,” she said on the show. “Because being the size I am and carrying around all this weight, my body is in constant pain because of the strain I have on it. And every day it gets worse. Because every day, something new hurts. And I feel like I’m trapped in this body.”

Her two daughters, Alize, 19, and Serenitti, 21, lived with Tammy to help take care of her; Tammy’s mother had also recently moved in to help out. “At this point, my addiction to food is causing me to get worse by the day because I can’t stop going there for the comfort that I need, that happiness that it brings me,” Tammy Patton said. “And to keep that feeling with me for as long as possible. And so I eat constantly.”

Tammy Patton explained that her eating issues began when she was 9 years old. At that point, her family started having financial problems due to her father’s drug addiction. Tammy Patton and her mother ended up moving from California to Texas to live with her grandfather, who helped them start over. “I didn’t know anyone. All of our family was back in California. I had no friends,” she said. “So food became all I had for a while. It was the way I dealt with the loneliness in my life at the time, by eating.”

My 600-Lb Life: Whatever Happened To Tammy Patton

During her first visit with Dr. Now, Tammy Patton weighed 594 pounds. The bariatric surgeon gave her a goal to lose 60 pounds in two months – and Tammy began her weight loss journey. She seriously revamped her diet, with the support of her family, and dedicated herself to completing the exercises Dr. Now assigned her.

During the week of her follow-up with Dr. Now, Tammy Patton had lost only 19 pounds, according to her special home scale. She called him and was honest about her progress, and he gave her another month to lose the weight. When Tammy returned, she weighed 550 pounds, making her total weight loss 44 pounds in six months.

Dr. Now still needed her to lose another 40 pounds in the next two months to qualify for weight loss surgery. Per his instructions, Tammy Patton met with a psychologist, Dr. Paradise, who encouraged her to go to the grave of her children’s father to fully process her death – instead of always being strong for others and keeping the pain bottled up inside.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tammy Patton was unable to follow up with Dr. Now in person two months later. Instead, she spoke with him via video call to let him know that although she hadn’t lost any more weight, she hadn’t gained any either. A year and a month after her trip, Tammy Patton went to see Dr. Now in person and weighed in at 552 pounds – meaning that although she technically gained 2 pounds, she essentially maintained her weight.

Again, Dr. Now gave Tammy a goal of losing 40 pounds in two months. She doubled her efforts, and weighed in at 496 pounds during her follow-up appointment – meaning a weight loss of 57 pounds. Her total weight loss: 98 lbs.