- Michael Hebranko: [being removed from his home at 980 pounds] Don't make it like a spectacle. Let people understand that this is a disease and that people are dying from it. It's the number one secondary cause of death in this country. Please, it's not a circus act.
- Michael Hebranko: Half an hour after I hit 198 pounds, I went out and celebrated and had 4 frankfurters, I hadn't had a Nathan's hot dog in 19 months, and loving the hot dogs I went and had 1, thinking I could eat 1. 1 turned into 2, 2 turned into 3, 3 turned into 4. And you can't have a hot dog without French fries, and you can't have French fries without the melted cheese on it. So that's where it started.
- Michael Hebranko: Every time I slipped, where some people would gain 5 pounds, my binges would be 20 pounds, I mean if I sat down and ate pork chops, I'd sit down and eat 24 pork chops, hot dogs would be 20-22 hot dogs for dinner. If I had breakfast it would be a dozen scrambled eggs.
- Robert Kolman: If there is a fat gene that exists in my patients, it's not reversible today, there is no cure for it. But it is treatable.
- Narrator: Many of the patients at Brook Haven have been trapped at their homes and haven't walked for many years. Rob Kolman founded Brook Haven when a friend of his died from morbid obesity. He believes his patients all share one thing in common.
- Robert Kolman: Everyone of them, 100%, they're food addicts. They are addicted to food. It's no different from drugs, it's no different than alcohol.
- Narrator: Sometimes it's hard to get the patients to understand they're addicted to food.
- Robert Kolman: Most of the patients who come in here are in denial and don't understand why this has happened to them. 'What's wrong with me? How did I blow up like this?' The answer is that you've been consuming too many calories over a long period of time, and you don't exercise.
- Michael Hebranko: I had to be on my own, and I had to eat. And I did it right the fist day, and the second day, then there was the holidays, and there was this, and there was a little slip here, a little slip there. How successful would all alcoholics be if they *had* to have a drink every day? Just one. How successful would a heroin addict be if he *had* to take a little heroin ever day?
- Michael Hebranko: I eat out of boredom, I eat whenever food is around, I think of food when there's no food around, I think of food constantly. I have gone through all kinds of psychoanalysis, if I could find out the answer, I have been searching and searching, and I will continue searching until... *if* this disease gets the best of me and takes me to my grave.