Dr Phil, on a re-run show, aired again this past week, recently featured a lady who had just been named "the World's Heaviest Woman" in the Guiness Book of World Records. She weighs over 700 lbs.
The show was the usual anti obesity show and how this lady, Pauline Potter, was going to die soon and how Dr Phil was going to intervene like the knight in shining armor he feels he is.
The problem with the show was, it was very incorrect in the information given. I understand that reality TV is often not very real but seems that a show like Dr Phil should keep more integrity than that.
Apparently, according to Pauline's own website, she celebrated getting to over 700 lbs and sold videos of her moving around etc on this website. There is no indicator that she's not still selling these!
Also, the show first aired in November 2011 and Pauline and husband claimed they were divorced however, an article in late 2011, mentioned they'd gotten back together again, their love rekindled in L.A. in 2010. Dr Phil had asked on the show if they had problems with intimacy and Pauline said they did not, but in two articles, the ex or now- non ex, admitted that they were afraid to have intercourse because they might break the bed.
Pauline told a couple of reporters she planned to lose 200 lbs in early 2012 because she and her ex - non ex husband wanted to have a child together (she has an older son from another marriage).
And Pauline, who weighed around 643 lbs when she appeared on Dr Phil, weighed over 700 lbs in Jan 2012 so the food Dr Phil had sent her had not appeared to help with her weight loss.
The strangest thing on the show was that Dr Phil introduced a Dr Ted Khalili as a "world renown weight loss expert" and offered Pauline, Dr Khalili's and his office dietician's help in her weight loss. What no one mentioned was that Dr Khalili is a weight loss surgery surgeon in L.A. Pauline did mention in one article that she planned weight loss surgery but this was never mentioned on the Dr Phil show.
And strangest of all, is that the last mention of Pauline I can find is in Feb 2012. Did she die from the weight loss surgery like the poor "Half Ton Mom" did? Did she stay at her present weight or close to it? If anyone has heard where Pauline is recently, do let me know. I very much, hope things went OK for her but having seen so many negative results from weight loss surgery, I cannot help wondering how she is now, especially that I cannot find any recent mention of her on the internet. Also, in the cases of the very obese I've seen, weight loss surgery has not helped them. Often, they ended up gaining a lot of weight back - for example Allen from "Big Medicine" never did get out of his bed or worse yet, the weight loss surgery patients who started out very large, did not live like the "Half Ton Mum" of TLC who died 2 weeks after her gastric bypass.
All this to remind us that TV is for entertainment only - we should really hesitate to believe anything we hear on TV even from a source who seems so reliable, like Dr Phil.