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Original poster

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

238 replies

foreverondiet · 21/02/2011 11:37

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."

OP posts:
Unwind · 22/02/2011 17:38

SDTG - could you swim? Or do aqua aerobics, something that takes the pressure off your joints.

StayingDavidTennantsGirl · 22/02/2011 17:43

I do swim, when I go to the gym, and I also use a static bike and some of the weights machines (in the hopes of strengthening my core muscles so that I can do other exercise). I've found that I tend not to lose weight just by swimming - I need to do more, so that's what I try to do (when I have the motivation, that is).

SheikYerbouti · 22/02/2011 17:59

THE TAXPAYER DID NOT PAY FOR HER TREATMENT

Unwind · 22/02/2011 18:01

If you can use a static bike, what about a normal one?

I find this story amazingly inspirational:

theamazing39stonecyclist.wordpress.com/

Unwind · 22/02/2011 18:01

theamazing39stonecyclist.wordpress.com/

StayingDavidTennantsGirl · 22/02/2011 18:09

It might sound mad, but the thing about a static bike is that I can stop and get off if it gets too much, or I can make the incline less, and carry on. If I go on a bike ride, I'd still have to get home if things got too much. Plus I live in Scotland, and it doesn't rain in the gym!

lionlilac · 22/02/2011 18:19

At 17 she should most certainly be capable of cooking/cleaning and creating an exercise regime at home. But - does she have any mental health problems?

ccpccp · 22/02/2011 19:01

I try to save my compassion for people who deserve it, or where it will do some good SDTG.

What this woman needs is a good kick up the arse, which is what she got on fat camp. The result - massive weight loss.

Forty stone. What a waste of a life, and all because she wasnt spoon fed a 4k a month weight program when she got home.

Next stop - the dole queue and a life on benefits. We'll be paying for her (if we arent already).

PedlarsSockpuppet · 22/02/2011 19:07

ccpccp - are you reading a different thread?

She has been caring for her mother since age 10 and a poster upthread has indicated that local knowledge puts her caring role started MUCH earlier

She has not had a decent life

Taxpayers did not pay for her to go to America

She has had little or no Young Carers support

Yet you feel able to kick her

Nice one

solooovely · 22/02/2011 19:12

It sounds like she didn't have the confidence to keep it up when she got home, I think her mum should have helped her with that.

SheikYerbouti · 22/02/2011 19:18

nice post, ccp. You're all heart Hmm

Yes, of course it's as easy as saying "step away from the cake, fatty", isn't it?

ccpccp · 22/02/2011 19:21

"ccpccp - are you reading a different thread?"

I sometimes wonder if I am PedlarsSockpuppet.

There are plenty of young carers out there who arent the fattest teenager in Britain.

I dont care if taxpayers paid for her or not - the fact is someone was compassionate enough to give her a 9 month fat camp freebie and she squandered it. Its at this point the carrot stops and the stick starts.

Just becasue your mum puts fish and chips on the table the day you get home and there isnt a tennis court nearby doesnt mean you can just give up. Thats exactly what she did.

SheikYerbouti · 22/02/2011 19:28

It's not as simple as that though, is it?

She has an eating disorder. Would you expect someone with anorexia/bulemia to recover from their illness unsupported? it seems she has received NO support from anyone, her mother, local health authority upon her retun from her 9 month camp. Of course she's going to fall off the wagon.

Add into the extreme complexity of an eating disorder the relationship with her mother and also the fact that it seems that she has been caring for her mother since she was at infant school.

Telling her to go to the gym and stop eating chips is hardly going to work for her, is it?

begonyabampot · 22/02/2011 19:51

ccpccp - loves the attention you are giving them - every comment on every thread is in the same style - just to provoke the reaction they crave.

ChilledChick2 · 22/02/2011 20:11

I'm absolutely disgusted by the mother TBH. I'd read an article before she went to the camp and her mother claimed that she was such a hungry baby (a few months old IIRC), that she was regularly giving her daughter carnation milk.

To think this was only 17 years ago.

FellatioNelson · 22/02/2011 20:36

And even after she came back from the US she would still have been seriously obese, so probably friendless and suffering from very low self esteem, in spite of the supporty at Fat Camp. I imagine food has been her only friend. ccpccp you sound very cruel. If she was slashing her own arms to pieces, or starving herself, or deliberately getting PG over and over again for a baby to love, or showing signs of horrendously damaging OCD would you say the same? some things cannot be cured by just getting a grip.

Rebeccaruby · 22/02/2011 20:38

Hmmm...I know The Sun isn't the most reliable paper, but the mother says she does most of the cooking. She also mentions that when she goes for a walk with her daughter, the daughter gets out of breath (presumably before her). And she managed for 9 months when her daughter was away. So how can the daughter possibly be a carer, unless the mother is manipulating this in a sort of Munchausens by proxy manner?

And where do they get the money from to buy the sort of amount of food required for that sort of weight gain? Chocolate and convenience food is expensive; vegetables, pulses and economy packs of fish or chicken are not. And yes, I do know that economy packs of chicken are rather morally dubious Blush.

I do feel that the daughter has been badly treated, but she needs to break free. Btw, I'm not writing this from a smug, thin perspective. I'm 5"6 and 12 stone 3, so I know I'm not perfect.

GabySolis · 22/02/2011 20:46

She's 17, she's been learning to eat healthily for the past year or however long it was at the camp. When she got out she should have carried on.
HOWEVER with a mum like that what the hell chance has she got? If her mum actually gave a stuff about her daughter's health and wellbeing she would have encouraged her. NOT welcomed her home from all her hard work with a big portion of fried fish and chips. Angry
If she really cared about her future health she'd be supporting, not hindering her.

GabySolis · 22/02/2011 20:50

Oh and what the chuff has not being able to afford the gym got to do with getting fit?! That's the most lame, pathetic excuse ever.
Plenty of people get fit without resorting to extortionate gym fees. Running/jogging is free, so is bouncing and jumping around the room, and making up dance routines to your fave music, or even so much as stepping on and off the bottom step of your stairs a la a step aerobics class!
Total cop out saying that if you ask me.

A1980 · 22/02/2011 21:58

The teenager says: "I'd learned to enjoy low-fat foods like salads, bagels, yoghurt"

Why the hell couldn't she learn to enjoy things like that here? THey're readily available. What a waste of public money.

HHLimbo · 22/02/2011 22:44

This is clearly an eating disorder, like bulimia or anorexia. Noone tells them to 'shut up and why the hell couldnt they just eat at home?'

headfairy · 22/02/2011 22:58

stayingdavidtennantsgirl I really didn't mean to make you feel bad about yourself last night, sorry if I did. What I meant was that you must have some other underlying conditions to make walking so difficult - which obviously you have. I did phrase it rather abruptly, sorry for that. 15 stone while obviously overweight for all but the exceptionally tall, it's not normally so overweight as to create too many problems.

StayingDavidTennantsGirl · 22/02/2011 23:15

GabbySolis - do you think you could run or jog or bounce or jump around the room, or do dance routines or even step up and down the first step of your staircase, if you were carrying a load of 30 stone?? Because being 40 stone, as this girl is, is the equivalent of a person of a healthy weight of about 10 stone carrying a load of three times their own body weight! Damn near impossible to do for any length of time, without taking into account the damage she may already have done to her joints, and the strain on her joints and back of just carrying that much weight.

I've said this before in this thread.

Headfairy - sorry for going all sensitive on you. I do see that you were being supportive, and am sorry for leaping to conclusions.

FioFio · 23/02/2011 09:38

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted

StayingDavidTennantsGirl · 23/02/2011 13:21

I did wonder about trying to explain to ccpccp what it actually feels like to be depressed and overweight, from my own experience, but decided not to, partly because I think begonyabampot is right, and s/he is doing it just to stir things up, and partly because I get the very clear impression that s/he neither wants to understand or empathise nor has the emotional capacity or intelligence to do so.

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