Although Donna Simpson is currently in the Guinness Book of World Records as the World’s Heaviest Mother, it looks like she’s not going to go down in history as the World’s Fattest Woman, a goal that had her eating as many as 15,000 calories per day.
Since she is no longer with her former fiancé, Philippe Gouamba, who is the father of her daughter, Jacqueline, Simpson says it no longer makes sense for her to continue getting fatter.
“It’s fine to gain weight when you have a partner who will help feed you and take care of everything around you,” she told HuffPost Weird News in an exclusive interview. “But that’s between two adult people who make the choice. I realized that I couldn’t expect my kids to do that for me.”
According to a post on her website, Simpson says since she left the home she shared with her ex and moved back to her hometown, she realized she has to lose weight for her family’s sake.
“Now that I have sole responsibility of taking care of my children, I must drastically change my lifestyle,” she wrote. “Most people see me as a woman who became famous for wanting to gain weight while the rest of the world was trying to slim down. This was true as I was in a relationship that was based on a fetish …”
Donna’s weight actually earned her $90,000 a year through fans at her website who paid a subscription fee to have access to photographs of her, and to watch her eat via live-stream video.
“I have fans who send me baklava and cheesecake and everything else you can imagine,” Simpson told ABC News in an interview last year.
Simpson’s current plan is to slim down to her goal weight of 370 pounds. “That is, unless I meet someone who wants me to be heavier,” she said.
