For this to make me so angry - obese teenager, todays Daily Telegraph

[foreverondiet]

link

Basically, she was funded by her local health board to attend a programme in the USA at a cost of over £4k a month for a 9 month period....

"She said: "I'd been following a programme of healthy eating in the camp where I'd been living in North Carolina, America, and I'd learned to enjoy low-fat foods like salads, bagels, yoghurt and even buffalo meat. "I was really looking forward to trying it all out back home but, when I arrived, my mum said she hadn't had time to prepare any healthy food so we had fish and chips instead.

"From that moment on, I had a niggling feeling that things weren't going to work out."

link

Daily Mail link to what she eats in an average day. Am still so about this, and think she has been let down by everyone.

I think it indicates how strained the mother daughter relationshio must be if the daugher is blaming the mother, and the mother is blaming the daughter, all played out in the press.

Her mother (according to the DM link, which admittedly has probably twisted her words like barley sugar) seems to have no sympathy for her daughter at all, and does now acknowledge the fact she has cared for her from such a young age.

It is very, very sad.

It does sadly illustrate the fact that 90% of people who lose weight on diets put on more than they weighed in the first place.

Don't agree with the comments above about cost of healthy foods though. I eat loads of brown rice. If you buy it in big quantities it is not expensive. Carrots are note xpensive. Tinned sardines aren't. I don't think healthy foods have to be expensive. I only drink tap water. That doesn't cost me much.

This girl though has a serious mental problem and needs some kind of intervention.

I see no lesser reason to fund this girl's recovery than to fund the recovery of an anorexic at risk of death. The two are not so very different. I would say that if she has been morbidly obese for over half her life, then she is not as well equipped mentally, socially or emotionally to take control of her own destiny compared to a 'normal' 17 year old - she will most certainly be psycologically damaged somehow - by her mother if you ask me.

I don't think her mother wants her to be slim and normal and have friends/boyfriends/a job because then she might leave her. This is toxic enabling, and all about the mother's need for control.

They should have spent the money on a gastric band, and funded her to live in a hostel with aftercare and support, instead. Also telling someone who has been dangerously obese that the way forward is through bagels is pure idiocy. Don't these so-called professionals know anything about food when used as a drug?

I don't think healthy food are necessarily expensive, eg cereal an ok breakfast, but one bowl not two, and no need to have the coke and toast as well.

Bananas are cheaper than snickers bars, and I would guess that you can have a healthy lunch for the price of 2 x fish and chips [has no idea how much a fish and chips would cost, but guessing at least £2 per portion?].

There are lots of cheap healthy foods eg value chopped tomatoes, carrots, but eating lots of vegetables can be expensive.

i saw the prog this girl was on
nothing but heartfelt sympathy for her
some messages here show ignorance and inhumaity

For those who say that a gastric band is not the answer beacuse will not deal with the psychological aspect of her obesity and dysfunction - No, it won't but then again, neither will losing weight the painfully slow and hard way. She will need intensive counselling and therapy whichever way she loses weight, but at least with a gastric band it would be much much harder for her to relapse and put the weight back on. She is in a vicious cycle in that her low self-esteem would be helped by weight loss, but low self esteem is in itself a sabateur of weightloss through normal dieting. I think she needs help on all sorts of levels, but I think a GB would have been money better spent than the fat camp, in terms of keeping the weight off.

Foreverondiet: I sometimes have two bowls of cereal, depending on what it is. Not of things like muesli or whatever but definitely of cornflakes. So I didnt find that too shocking to be honest.

I also believe that changing her diner for example would be fairly easy by filling bolognese sauce with loads of nice veggies.

But to do so she would need support from home. I am currently trying to get rid of some weight and have to say it's way easier when my partner is being supportive. It's SO much harder to resist the chocolate when I can hear him chewing some next to me.
So I don't blame the girl for falling back into her habits. I can not believe how a mum could do this to her chid though, it's so sad.

Best, and probably only, thing she could do is leave

I find it so sad.

I think the girl does sound immature and really needs some handholding, like she had in the US, to keep her motivated. As she did so well in America I think she would have contiued to progress if she had the support of her family. Hopefully one day she will relalise that her weight is her responsibilty and she will have the motivation and confidence to go for it.

I really don't think gastric banding or by-passing is the answer, because like Fiofio pointed out, she would likely develop an addiction to replace the one she already has to food.
I think it would be better in the long run for her to have some serious therapy and counselling, and to try and break the destructive dependancy that her mother has on her, as it isn't fair, along side a complete lifestyle overhaul and some needed education about preparing healthy, low cost meals. In her case as well, I do think she should get a free gym membership to motivate her to exercise.

You are right of course PS, but the fact is that even if she solved all her emotional issues through counselling, at 40 stone she is probably never going to be able to reach a normal healthy weight range in a very, very long time, if ever. If she stopped over-eating today and just ate what for most people would be considered a normal amount of food her weight would go down so slowly as to be negligable. She wouldn't gain any - but she wouldn't really burn any body fat either. She needs an exteme form of low-carb diet or a gastric band if she is to make any headway. It is completely unrealistic to expect her to lose wight by joining the gym, at 40 stone.

Judging by the weight losses on the biggest looser, (and they weighed much much less than her), she should be able to loose 5-7lb a week on a sensible 1500 calorie a day with some exercise. She needs to loose 30 stone, so at a rate of 2 stone per month it would take around 15-18 months.

I know think there should be an NHS sponsored residential sixth form college for morbidly obese teenagers - to take them away from their family set up and to reeducate.

But someone whose body is that huge would feel truly starved on 1500 calories a day - it would be physical and emotional torture for her, and it's unlikely to be completely consistent either. She is not a brain dead person being tube fed - she will still have to fight the very real physical urges of hunger as well as the emotional urges, for comfort.
And someone that large just cannot excercise efficiently enough to make much difference in the beginning. I'm not saying it cannot be done, just that I don't think low-fat and exercise is the most effective /realistic way for someone in this predicament.

FN - of course 2 bowls of cornflakes isn't shocking, but once you add in the toast and coke its a very high carb high calorie breakfast.

BTW I know someone who got a gastric band losts weight but then ate so much it burst.

FN- Very true about the weightloss/gym situation, but surely the exercise would make her feel better about herself due to the endorphins released from it? Something very low impact like water aerobics where the pressure is taken off her joints maybe? It might give her some needed energy and give her a better quality of life.

I honestly think she has serious mental issues (and that is the same for most morbidly obese people) that will never be resolved by having surgery alone... gastric bands are not a miracle cure, you can still take in the calories. I haven't read the whole thread and apologies if I'm shooting my mouth off, but she clearly needs a constant carer and is not able to make choice about what food she should eat.

Very very sad.

It's possible to re-inflate (no idea if that's the right term) the stomach back to a larger size if you constantly over-eat after a gastric bypass

Surely she must be eating more than listed in that article. Yes it's quite a lot, and would almost certainly make her overweight (unless she had a very active lifestyle or did lots of exercise) but is it enough to make her 30 stone overweight?

If that is an accurate description of what she's eating, it sounds easy enough to fix - one bowl of cereal instead of two, and a cup of tea instead of the Coke for breakfast. A sandwich (made with two slices of bread not six!) for lunch and some fruit and yoghurt. A dinner like spaghetti bolognese is fine and could stay the same, and there's no harm in the odd chocolate bar or biscuit.

I know these things are easier said than done, but plenty of people who binge-eat are in a much worse state and their first step has to be learning to eat normal meals at normal times etc instead of whatever disordered pattern they've got into. Which is a harder job than making a few tweaks or limiting portion size a bit.

However I suspect she's eating a lot more than that, sadly, and it's not going to be easy at all for her to resolve the problem. I hope she gets the help she needs :(

I thought that also Ephiny, she must be eating more than what she claims.

I think what people should realise with these "Living on benefits with 99 children by different fathers" stories is that the subject will sit down and give their story to the journalist in good faith. The journalist will then go away and write a different article which has no real resemblance to what the subject has told them in any way. This is with the purpose of producing the sort of reaction that the OP had here. The subject usually has no realistic address against the newspaper.

Another article: link

FFS "But I found it hard to find things like the lean buffalo meat she ate at Wellspring."

Or:

"I have tried to make changes to our diets. For instance, when we have fish and chips, rather than getting them from the shop I use frozen, breaded fish and make the chips myself by baking them in the oven.

I for one have never eaten buffalo meat - eat some chicken or white fish instead! Or even lean beef. Just not packs of biscuits and coke!

And why have fish and chips - much better to buy white fish and have a jacket potato.

What a whiney load of shit.

She spent 9 months on a training camp where they taught her good diet from bad, pointed out the reasons why she was overeating, and showed her a lifestyle that was turning it all around. She lost lots of weight and is to be applauded up to that point.

She gets home, mum puts a kebab pizza with mayonaise dip in front of her, and shes troughing like she never left. Shes 17, not 12, and is entirely in control of what she eats.

Shes let herself down and shes let the taxpayer down. And posters are coming out with excuse after whiney excuse for her. Its not her, its her environment/poverty/addiction. Blah blah blah...same old self delusional rubbish, best spouted while wrapping your gob around a king size twix.

Young Carers are at a very high risk of developing a weight problem.

PrincessStarla - as I said earlier in the thread, I weigh half what this girl weighs, and exercise is not only difficult and tiring, but painful too - it puts stress on joints and muscles - as I said, I get backache if I walk any real distance. I've been to the gym - at one point I was going three times a week, and it was helping, but I never felt the endorphin rush.

Ccpccp - what an insensitive, ignorant and unkind post. Read a bit deeper into the story - she is a young carer, with depression and absolutely zero support from her mother - and you expect her to cope brilliantly with her issues? You disgust me.