An all-new season of My 600-Lb Life premiered tonight on the TLC network with Octavia Gahagans, a 42-yr-old native of Kansas City, Missouri, opting for weight loss surgery after becoming immobile due to her extreme obesity.
On the season 7 premiere, viewers discovered that Octavia, who weighed 692 pounds, hadn’t left her apartment in years, and had become bedridden in the previous year of her life.
Similar to most participants of the show, Octavia revealed she had a rough childhood riddled with abuse. She grew up in an abusive home and saw her step-dad being violent towards her mother. And by the time she was 13, she had been a victim of molestation. Octavia weighed 400 pounds when she was 16-yrs-old, and by the time she was in her early 20s, she tipped the scales at 500 pounds.
Things got even worse for her when her mother passed away while she was 23-yrs-old. Octavia never had time to grief as she had to become the caretaker for her 15-yr-old sister Desiree. Octavia, however, says taking care of her sister is the highlight of her life as Desiree went on to graduate from high school and college, and didn’t “become a statistic.”
Unfortunately, once Desiree got married and moved out of the home she shared with Octavia, her weight spiraled out of control as she was finally able to mourn her mom.
Wanting a better life for herself, Octavia decided to make the tough journey to Houston, TX to see a bariatric surgeon and weight loss expert Dr. Younan Nowzaradan.
The journey wasn’t an easy one as Octavia needed the help of a team of paramedics in other to leave her home, and make the trip to Houston — something she labelled as “embarrassing.”
“My family and everyone is packing everything up now and we have the van that I’m going to be riding down to Houston in so I’m just about ready to go,” said Octavia. “We just need to get the mattress in it and then I need to be carried to it so EMTs are coming to help me with that but I’m a little nervous about it because it’s been a long time since I’ve been out of this apartment. I just hope there are no issues and it goes well.”
Upon arriving in Houston. Octavia ultimately got approved for the gastric bypass surgery by Dr. Now. And by the end of the show, she had lost an astonishing 236 pounds and weighed in at 456 lbs.
As for her current status today, Octavia appears to have continued on her weight loss journey – even sharing some recent pictures on her public Facebook page.
Below are recent weight loss update photos of Octavia from December 2018.
My 600 Lb Life’s Octavia Gahagans shows off her latest weight loss in a photo from December 2018
Octavia continues to reside in Houston following her weight loss surgery.