Weighty challenges: Ruby faces adversity in reality show's second season

PHILADELPHIA — Everyone seems to love a weight-loss story, and the Style Network's "Ruby" does not disappoint.

On a recent visit to Philadelphia, the show's star, Ruby Gettinger, who once weighed 700 pounds, disclosed that she's under 350 for the first time in her adult life.

"Flying here to Philly, I've never been able to sit in a seat at the airport, ever. I usually have to stand," but she decided to try it, she said. "I get chills talking about it. I could not believe, for the first time ever, I was able to fit in a seat at the airport."

But as Season 2 of the Comcast-owned cable channel's most-watched show gets under way Sunday, the pre-recorded Ruby is mourning the loss of her father last January.

Despondent, she's stopped keeping her food journal and strayed from the 1,700-calorie-a-day diet that's been gradually transforming a body that when the show began weighed nearly 500 pounds.

In other words, real life has intruded on the fairy tale.

And that's not such a bad thing.

Watch too much of NBC's "The Biggest Loser" and you might think the answer to this, and every other weight-loss obstacle, is a punishing visit to the gym.

On "Ruby," it's a trip to see Rascal Flatts perform.

I don't like many docu-soaps and as someone who's struggled with weight I like diet shows even less, but even I can't resist Gettinger — heck, I'm just going to call her Ruby — a honey-voiced redhead from Savannah, Ga., who says of her fans that she just wants to "hug their necks."

Though she's occasionally been weighed on camera, and will be again for this season's finale, "Ruby" for the most part has been less a show about peeling off the pounds than about a woman discovering simple joys most of us take for granted, starting with walking outside.

It probably doesn't hurt, either, that Ruby's journey has turned out to more twists than even the Style Network expected.

For one thing, we're talking about a woman who says she has no childhood memories.

Until she entered therapy as part of the show, "I never thought about it like it was a big deal," said Ruby, who remembers "everything from 13 on. I have a couple of memories of 11 and 12, but anything 10 and under, nothing. Nothing at all."

Though her father died only recently and her mother's still alive, they haven't been much help, she said.