A person’s weight is one of the most important health factors to try to monitor. For some people, eating is like a drug and can become an addiction. When eating begins taking over someone’s daily life, it can be a difficult addiction to break, even with medical help. Hospitals and medical offices are supposed to be the places where people go when they need help, but instead, some of these facilities only care about the money, which means that they often try to get people in and out as quickly as possible. This is a practice that is seen as unfair, but it’s one that occurs in almost all areas of the country.
Steven Assanti is an 800-pound man from Rhode Island who saw how careless the medical system is when he began seeking help in 2015 due to issues that he started experiencing as a result of being overweight. He recently took part in an interview on CBS where he talked about what led up to him being overweight and some of the things that he’s tried to do to get it under control. Assanti feels that overeating is a disease and that it’s been hard to stop eating the foods that he enjoys while learning how to eat foods that are healthy for the body. This is one of the first hurdles that are typically overcome for those who are morbidly obese. When Assanti finally realized he needed to do something to try to lose weight, he went to a hospital in his hometown to try to get help from a doctor.
Assanti’s goal is to lose about 550 pounds. In order to reach this goal, he knew that gastric bypass would likely be the only option available. However, he would need to lose a certain amount on his own before he would be approved for surgery. After checking into the hospital and staying there for about three months, Assanti lost about 25 pounds. Seeing that he was losing weight, he decided to reward himself by ordering a pizza. This is often one of the meals that people who are overweight tend to order after they see a significant number of pounds that are lost. While waiting on his pizza to be delivered, he knew that he would need to try to sneak it into his room so that his doctors and nurses wouldn’t see what he was eating. The hospital did know that he ordered the pizza, but the actions that they took against Assanti were surprising. They kicked him out of the hospital. Assanti tried to blame the security guards at the hospital for letting the delivery driver in the building with the food even though he was the one who placed the order. Assanti soon went on “My 600-Pound Life” to seek help from a doctor who performs surgery on morbidly obese patients and has started losing weight and also has a girlfriend.
