This season, as her therapist tries to get her to uncover memories he's sure she's repressed for a reason, Ruby's going through her school records and revisiting places where she once spent time.

"I'm getting pictures together, it's almost as if I've become a private investigator," she said.

There are pieces of this that feel too private for television, and I was relieved to find that not all of Ruby's therapy sessions take place on camera.

The cameras, though, are just about everywhere else.

"Maybe six days a month I get to myself, and that's about it," she said, insisting that the show's crew has become like "family" to her.

But then everyone seems like family to Ruby, whose tightly woven network supplies if, anything, a little too much of the show's drama.

And her past isn't the only mystery she's eager to solve.

Lately, she said, she'd been thinking about things she'd never considered before, such as that "a lot of people do cocaine," but only some become addicted.

"A lot of people eat, but there's only a few that will gain the weight or become addicted to a certain sweet, you know what I mean?" she said.

She said she regularly hears from fans who say she's inspired them to lose weight, and more importantly, to not let their size trap them inside their homes.

"And it's sad, because some of them will come out of their house and they're riding their bikes and they're probably like 50 or 60 pounds overweight, and they said that people make fun of them," she said.

But they're learning, as she has, "that after a while, people ignore" them. "It's like going into a restaurant: After five minutes, they're going to stop staring at me," she said.

She's also heard from people who'll tell her "that they used to be those people that are prejudiced, that would look at people like me and judge us and (say) 'Why don't they just diet?'" but after seeing the show, "they finally get it, they finally understand their mother or their sister, they finally understand what they're going through," she said.

"That's worth it all to me," she said.

What she's been trying to get across, she said, is "that people not define themselves by their weight. Don't let it define you. And I feel like some people heard me."