"Hello Sir, my name is Kevin. I'm a government employee assigned to the Weight Loss Initiative here at the request of one Margaret Benson. Is she currently available?" I asked a very large man who had opened the door. He must have been well over 600 pounds and near seven feet. He looked down at me and my 5'5" frame, maybe 130 pounds, questioning my intentions. Maybe he was offended that I was mentioning weight? Either way, my business was not with him, but with his wife. You see, the government started an initiative to get America healthy again. A person could request a coach, and that person was required to live at that person's house for a month or two. The person would be paid all living expenses and earn a pretty sizable tax credit. The goal was to get the person to lose weight and change the lifestyle of the obese. The more weight lost, the better the credit. The woman I was here to help stood to lose a ton of weight and get a hefty tax credit. She was supposed to be over 600 pounds and be rather debilitated. Per her profile, she struggled with walking, and ate way too much food every day.
"You know my wife is just fine the way she is," the man said in his thick southern accent, rubbing his massive belly covered by a too small (because how could it not be?), mustard-stained, white tank top. "It's skinny losers like you that make her feel so insecure." I had been doing this for about four months. My first cases were not nearly this extreme, but regardless of scale, they always had influences like this where people would defend their obesity. Fact is, it's unhealthy and needs to be curbed.
"I'm sure she's great," I replied, "but she called our association asking to be included in the initiative. It's our duty to help those that have asked for it. Clearly she's concerned about her current lifestyle. We don't need to change who she is completely, just adjust her lifestyle to be more focused on healthy living." I felt like this was the best answer I could give without flat out saying 'fat, gonna die.'
He looked down at me with great skepticism. "I'll show you to your room."
"Thank you, sir," I said, heaving up my luggage and entering the house. Inside was a sloppy mess of a home. The signs were all there; open cans of soda everywhere, empty pizza boxes tossed on the floor, household objects scattered and in complete disarray. The lifestyle these two were living was intensely destructive. The house itself was small, only about a thousand square feet. My room was clearly meant to be a tiny office, a sleeping bag laid out on the floor. Hey, this job paid pretty well, so I was willing to do it. I would have to get used to the smell though; the whole house had that musty, lived in smell of people that put cleanliness towards the bottom of the totem pole. "Okay, sir," I said, after looking over my living quarters. "I think I'm ready to meet Margaret."
He opened the door in the back of the house. "Maggie!" he called. "Your government boy is here to do that thing you were trying to do, for the taxes and whatnot."
"Let him in, Fred," I heard a female say. He ushered me in. Upon entering the room, I saw Margaret, truly a whale of a woman. She took up 90% of a king sized bed. She had pale white skin and dirty brown hair, and her face had a sort of childlike charm to it. She was sitting up on her bed and looking like a small mountain. Her upper body was "covered" by a white tanktop, which was straining to cover her impossibly large breasts, which looked like two pale watermelons but bigger. Her belly was somewhat hidden by her prodigious chest, but her thighs and ass were out there to see. Apparently, again on her case file, she was unable to put on shorts of any nature as her butt had expanded to such a degree and her weight was so extreme that there was almost no way to put anything on her. Miraculously, she wasn't a total blob, and still had some semblance of a person left, albeit an inflated, huge, near seven-foot person who weighed well over 600 pounds. I cautiously approached the bed. Even sitting on it, she was taller than I was, and she had to look down past her bosom to see me.
"H-hello, ma'am," I said, a bit shocked. "My name is Kevin, and I'm here with the Weight Loss Initiative to respond to your request. Are you ready to lose some weight and feel great?"
"Oh thank you!" she exclaimed, clearly happy to see me. She pulled me in for a hug, lifting me off my feet. My head was now resting on her shoulder, and my upper torso pressed against her breasts. I could feel tears streaming from her face roll down my neck. It made sense that this was a big moment for her, and I didn't want to take anything away from someone who was actively trying to change their life for the better. I was glad that she was in it for the health reasons; that would make this process a lot easier, and I immediately respected the client more knowing she would at least try to do what she needed to do to be successful. It's situations like this that made this job worth doing, despite the sometimes-precarious situations we get put in. She let me go. Her grip was really tight. Clearly she had strength, she just needed to lose some weight, and by some, I meant like three or four bodies worth of weight. "So I'm sorry I'm not wearing any pants or shorts, hun. I can only wear this stretchy underwear, and even that I switch out about once a week. I know I must disgust you..."
Well, yeah. "No!" I said. "This is why I'm here. All you need to do is keep a positive attitude and I have no doubt you'll do great."
