14 Jul 09

He was enormously obese — a lost soul with no friends and no life who had given up on himself and on life. David Smith even hatched a plan to end it. He would get an inflatable swimming pool, and he would take it to a remote spot in the Arizona desert. He would fill it with gasoline, get in, and light a match. It would be a horrific and painful way to die, but that’s what Smith thought he deserved. And the best thing about it would be that the fire would consume his 650-pound body. When it had done his work, there would be nothing left to make fun of anymore.

It is hard to believe that he is now cut and ripped, a certified personal trainer with a body that’s no longer to die in a blaze. He has a future that never seemed possible — and a past that seemed to have belonged to someone else. “It’s a different person,” Smith told Lauer after watching a video that showed the gelatinous blob he used to be. “It’s not me anymore.”

The remarkable story of how Smith lost more than 400 pounds in just 26 months without gastric bypass surgery is the subject of a TLC documentary that premiered Sunday, July 12. It’s called “The 650-pound Virgin,” and it followed Smith’s journey from a suicidal and friendless loner who never left his house to a new life as an inspiration to everybody who has battled obesity.

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