REMEMBER THIS MAN WHO WEIGHED 1022 POUNDS? This Is How He Looks Now!
Thomas Davis never had an easy life, much less a happy one. At the age of five, his father died of a heart attack, leaving him and his mother completely alone with a mountain of debt that forced them to sell their house and car. They were compelled to go live with their only living relative and the person Thomas hated the most for as long as he could remember: his aunt Marge, his mother’s younger sister. Thomas’s mother was not the best mother a child could have, but at least she tried to take care of him and made an effort to make him happy. However, his aunt was the opposite of her older sister. Marge was a bitter, cold, and cruel woman. Her favorite hobby was, aside from watching cooking shows on TV, insulting her nephew and laughing at everything he did behind his mother’s back. Thomas’s mother spent the day away from home working to support him, as her older sister would only allow them to live with her if she brought home money. So, the boy spent most of the day alone with his sinister aunt and her curious way of playing with him. That time in his childhood would mark him forever and would be crucial for all the events that took place a few years later.
During Thomas’s adolescence and early adult years, the boy’s life was complicated, but he tried to study hard and practice various sports to forget about family problems and to have a better future. But life had other plans for him. Misfortune came knocking on his door again when Thomas was sixteen, when his high school principal came to pick him up from basketball practice and gave him the worst news a son could receive: his mother had died, and the only living family he had left was his aunt Marge. The causes surrounding his mother’s death were a real mystery to him and his aunt, who was hardly saddened by the loss of her older sister. After finishing all the hospital paperwork and the funeral, which was barely attended, the social services agents were very clear with Thomas.
“Until you reach the age of majority, you should live with your aunt and she would have all the rights to your custody; otherwise, you would go into the foster care program.”
Davis hated his aunt but thought it was better to stick it out for a couple more years living with her, and then he could go off to college—hopefully one far away—and start a new life away from her and his tragic family past. And the truth is that he succeeded. Things didn’t go the way Thomas had planned, though. The last two years with his aunt were a nightmare from which Thomas only managed to escape by going to study at the University of Chicago. There, for a while, things seemed to go well for him, but the good times didn’t last long. In recent years, Thomas had neglected his physical appearance to focus on improving his academic record, which caused some of his college classmates to start making fun of his overweight and poor skills for most sports on campus.
The bullying by his college peers was the beginning of the end in Thomas’s life and the trigger that brought to the surface all the years of suffering at the hands of his aunt Marge. He felt so self-conscious and sad that instead of focusing on furthering his education and building a successful career, he started skipping class without telling anyone. Sometimes he would show up in class to avoid being expelled and having his scholarship to the university withdrawn, but eventually, he stopped. Where did Thomas spend his days and nights? That was the question on everyone’s mind for weeks. No one saw him on campus, and when he did show up, he looked like he hadn’t slept and hadn’t showered in days. Another detail that everyone noticed was that Thomas was getting fatter and fatter with each passing day. This made everyone think that during his absences, Davis was eating and playing console games in the evenings.
And the truth is that they were right. Thomas had found in fast food and sweets the solace for all the problems in his life. The more calories he ate throughout the day, the happier he felt and the less and less he cared about his physical appearance and what others thought of him. As his behavior did not change but rather worsened as the weeks went by, the university ended up expelling him and withdrew the scholarship it had awarded him a year earlier. Thomas, far from worrying or feeling sorry for what he had done, was glad that he no longer had to pretend and dedicated every hour of the day to doing what he loved most and what had given him back the will to live: eating. It was impossible to imagine how food and his love for it would change his life, becoming his greatest blessing and, at the same time, his condemnation.
With the money he had saved, he was able to continue living for several months, but he soon began to realize that he would have to do something if he wanted to continue eating and living the very special lifestyle he had invented for himself—playing video games online, watching Netflix, and ordering food delivery every two hours. But Thomas refused to work and have to give up his lifestyle, so he desperately searched for a way to raise money that would allow him to keep paying rent and food every month. The days were passing and his savings were beginning to run out when one night, while watching a late-night TV quiz show, he found the solution to all his problems. He would enter a fast food contest and win first prize.
“It’s my dream job, eating food to my heart’s content and earning money for it. I’m going to do it.”
He said to himself as he wrote down the phone number of the contest he was going to enter. Fast food contests are very popular in the US, to the point that the people who participate in them don’t need to work at anything else in order to survive. Their sole purpose in life is to eat as much as they can and in as little time as possible, something Thomas had a natural gift for and was willing to give his all to succeed in life.
“Are you sure about what you’re doing, Thomas? In those contests, people are really crazy. Some people died hours later from overeating and lack of oxygen; their body literally stopped. It’s no game.”
This warned him one night by James, his only friend and fellow late-night video game player he had met playing online.
“I have never been more sure of anything in my life, my friend. Remember this day well, because it will be the day when everyone knows my name and I become the king of fast food.”
Thomas said excitedly as he ate his eighth burger of the day. And Thomas wasn’t wrong. That night, he won the contest by being the only one able to eat more than a hundred cheeseburgers in less than twenty minutes. Davis broke all the records and soon began to receive offers from everywhere to participate in more contests or to become the advertising image of a fast food brand: barbecue sauce, XXL beef, mayonnaise, mustard, soda of all flavors, and more. Thomas became the most famous fat man on television and the one everyone sought out for an autograph. His fame grew so quickly that in a matter of a few months, he was able to buy a huge house, forget about the debts that had haunted him all his life, and even have his own fan club.
At twenty-four, his life consisted of little sleep and eating while he was awake. His physical appearance and cardiovascular health were of increasing concern, especially considering that Thomas was capable of eating more than 30,000 calories a day—50,000 if he had to go to a contest or TV show that night—and did no physical activity whatsoever. Every week he gained between ten and twenty pounds, which meant that by the time he was twenty-five, Thomas weighed 600 pounds. But that never seemed to be a problem for him; quite the opposite. For Thomas, fame had not only made him more money than he had ever imagined, but it had also given him the opportunity to meet the love of his life, Rachel Black.
She was the captain of Thomas’s fan club and saw him as the sexiest, most masculine man on the planet despite the fact that he was overweight. Rachel was not a very healthy person either and loved to eat junk food with her husband, but she never went over the limits and tried to moderate herself. But that all changed when, a year after getting married and starting their life together, Rachel became pregnant with twins and the doctor forbade her to eat too much sugar and forced her to control her weight for her and the babies’ sake. The arrival of his children and the change in his wife’s lifestyle was a major turning point in Thomas’s life, but nothing could make him give up his lifestyle, not even his family.
Being a father had made him feel like the happiest man in the world, and he wanted to be a good father to his two sons, Gabriel and Anthony, and for a while, he was. But the happiness and family stability did not last long. The years went by, and what at first seemed like paradise would soon end up becoming a death sentence for Thomas. Fast food competitions and advertising campaigns were still his family’s livelihood, and the money he earned allowed them to live a relaxed and luxurious lifestyle. It was everything Thomas had dreamed of. There was only one problem: his health.
While his wife had started taking better care of herself and living a healthier lifestyle, Thomas was still eating more than 30,000 calories a day and barely moved from his couch at home. This caused the couple’s arguments to become more and more intense as Rachel wanted her husband to take better care of himself and give up the contests, but Thomas refused to give up any of that and continued to eat more and more every day.
“Do it for me, Thomas. For your children. Do you really want them to grow up with a father who can barely get out of bed? You’re getting fatter every day and, if I’m being honest, I’m starting to not like you anymore. I used to think you were sexy and I liked your belly, but now it’s too much. You have to take care of yourself, honey, just a little bit, okay?”
Rachel kept telling him in each of their discussions, but all her requests were to no avail.
“Why do you want me to lose weight? If you love me, you have to accept me as I am. I’d like you anyway, Rachel.”
He said, very offended. The only thing that really managed to stop Thomas and open his eyes was not his wife, nor his pride, but something much more terrifying and unexpected: the possibility of dying. Rachel was very tired of arguing and not getting her husband to try to change, so she made the drastic decision to abandon him and leave home with the twins without telling him. She only left him a note and a picture. It was a picture of their wedding in which they looked happier than ever. That was a turning point in Thomas’s life. He was devastated by his wife’s abandonment and, although he tried to find her and begged her to return home with his children, she refused and gave him an ultimatum that Thomas would never forget.
“If you don’t change, you will never see me or your children again. I’m sorry, Thomas, I can’t take it anymore.”
Thomas felt like his heart was breaking and his life was stopping, but instead of trying to follow the advice his wife and several doctors over the years had given him and change his unhealthy lifestyle habits, he decided to do just the opposite and let himself fall into a deep depression that would push his body to its limit. Far from starting a healthier diet, Davis began to triple his meals, and everything he ate had a very high amount of sugar and other unhealthy ingredients: industrial pastries, energy drinks, and meat—lots and lots of meat with sauces of all flavors.
“Food is the only thing I have left in this life. There is nothing else that brings me happiness. If I stopped eating, I would die of grief.”
He once told a journalist who interviewed him after attending a TV show where he performed an exhibition where he ate fifty hamburgers in record time. After the commercial break, Thomas was supposed to go on live again to prove that he was capable of continuing to eat non-stop, trying some new sugary drinks and delicious chocolate desserts. But that would never happen.
As he chewed and drank at the same time in front of thousands of spectators from all over the country, Thomas felt his heart stop and his whole body say enough. His weight was 1022 pounds, which exceeded all healthy limits and compromised his heart health to the max. It was only a matter of time before it would happen and his heart would no longer be able to withstand the pressure. There, live and in front of the whole country, Thomas Davis collapsed and became aware for the first time in many years of how wrong he had always been.
The emergency services acted quickly and managed to stabilize him, but he was in a coma for many days and the doctors did not even know if he would ever wake up. But he finally did. And when he woke up, the only person he asked for was his wife. However, she wasn’t there. In fact, no one was there—no publicity agents, no journalists, no fans. Thomas had almost died and there was no one wondering whether he had survived or not, not even his family. That made him realize how wrong he was and what a mistake he had made by ignoring Rachel.
In the hospital, he became aware of the dangers of being so fat and decided to follow the advice of all his doctors and stay away from the bad lifestyle habits that had caused his heart attack. Weighing over 1,000 pounds, Thomas was at risk of having a heart attack at any time, and doctors had already warned him that a second heart attack would be definite. He could barely get out of his hospital bed, which was much larger than any other patient’s, and needed help to go to the bathroom or wash himself. For all these reasons, Thomas agreed to undergo surgery to reduce the fat that surrounded his entire body and then, with effort and patience, to follow a strict diet that would help him to lose weight little by little and regain his independence.
“Today is the first day of my new life. I will make it, Doctor, I promise you. I will make my wife proud of me again and I will become an exemplary father to my children.”
Thomas told his doctor shortly before going into surgery. During the operation, Thomas came close to death a couple of times, but managed to pull through and woke up a few hours later in his hospital room where three people were impatiently waiting for him. They were his wife Rachel and his two sons, Anthony and Gabriel. The hospital had contacted her to let her know about the operation her husband was about to undergo. The law requires that the next of kin be informed, and Rachel decided to go to the hospital to find out how it had gone.
Thomas could not believe his eyes when he woke up; his whole family was looking at him, smiling at his bedside. He didn’t need anything else to make him feel happy and know that he had made the right decision. However, he still had a long way to go. After that first operation came two more and many months of recovery. Thomas had to forget about fast food, sweets, and soda drinks. Instead, his diet became a perfect mix of vegetables, fish, and very controlled carbohydrates that his doctors had designed for him along with a daily exercise plan.
He spent more than a year in the hospital, but the effort was worth it because a year and two months after suffering the heart attack on the TV show and weighing 1022 pounds, Thomas Davis could stand up and wash himself, walk for a full hour without feeling short of breath, and not miss eating a cheeseburger every hour. He needed a lot of therapy and there were very hard days when he needed to eat junk food so badly that he felt terrible anxiety and his mood worsened, but he never gave up. He was still overweight, of course, but his weight was far from what his body had been a year earlier: 350 pounds. That was his weight the day he left the hospital and returned home to his family.
“I congratulate you, Thomas. Not everyone who tries succeeds, but you fought to the end. I’m sorry you had to come close to death to realize the danger you were in, but I’m so glad I was able to help you turn your life around. There is still a long way to go, but I know now that you will make it. You are a good man and life will bring you much joy again. I am sure. Don’t lose faith.”
His doctor told him on the last day of therapy before Davis left the hospital. Upon returning home, Thomas had to face the harsh reality and, for the first time since the day of the heart attack, he had no commitments to keep. It seemed that the world had completely forgotten about him. Realizing how easily he could be cast aside was painful, but it motivated him to focus on his recovery and transformation into a healthier version of himself.
The press wanted to do several interviews with him when they heard he was back to document his progress, but Thomas turned them all down because he knew they felt no real interest in his well-being. For years he was the most profitable fat man on television; they wanted him to continue to get rich at the expense of his health, but they never cared about him. They were never his friends, never his family, not even when he was about to die during a TV show. The only public statement he made was on his own Instagram account, which ceased to be the account of a fat and famous man to become that of a family man struggling to improve himself and make his life a good example to follow for the rest of people who were in a similar situation to his.
“Overweight is not healthy, and if you want to start taking care of yourself and your family, start by throwing out all the junk in your fridge. Move your body and let yourself be helped by those who really love you. That’s my advice.”
His message caused a stir and made him popular again for several weeks, but no one was talking about the fat man of TV quiz shows anymore, but of a man who had managed to overcome himself and show everyone that with effort and faith, everything is possible.
