The girl who must eat every 15 minutes to stay alive

telegraph.co.uk/ ^ | 6-28-10

[Justaham]

Lizzie Velasquez weighs just four stone and has almost zero per cent body fat but she is not anorexic. In fact, the 21-year-old from Austin, Texas, must eat every 15 minutes to stay healthy.

Miss Velasquez has a rare condition which prevents her from gaining weight even though she eats up to 60 small meals a day.

[whizdumb]

if she has to eat every 15 min how the heck does she sleep?

[Randy Larsen]

She must eat in the bathroom!

[caseinpoint]

I agree you need carbs to keep energy up but I think there is a difference between simple carbs in a lot of junk food and complex carbs and it seems her reported snacking is all simple carbs, without a balance of other nutrients or long-lasting carbs.

[sit-rep]

if she did not have that heavy over bite, id have to go say hello after a couple beers! lol...

[chris_bdba]

I’m amazed at how many freepers obiviously don’t read befre posting? If they did they would not make such outlandish comments as half if them here!

[chris_bdba]

I’m amazed at how many freepers obiviously don’t read befre posting? If they did they would not make such outlandish comments as half of them here!

[sit-rep]

one second thought... Being she is slightly awkward, those hooters may just look like Marty Feldman...

[Ditter]

How awful! Poor girl!

[Sawdring]

Haha

[Justaham]

I know. I feel so sorry for her. Her legs are so thin and look like it could break anytime she takes a fall.

[Nepeta]

I agree you need carbs to keep energy up but I think there is a difference between simple carbs in a lot of junk food and complex carbs and it seems her reported snacking is all simple carbs, without a balance of other nutrients or long-lasting carbs.

The starch in a Twinkie is the same as the starch in pasta or bread or corn or a potato, the same bonds, the same linkages between simple carbohydrates.

There is no chemical difference between junk food carbohydrates and 'non-junk' carbohydrates. Look it up. I studied biochemistry, and there just is no difference. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is probably selling some kind of snake oil on the side.

[caseinpoint]

I am no nutritionist and will defer to a pro. I did think there was a difference between simple and complex carbs as far as digestion speed. Simple carbs digested quickly for fast energy and complex carbs digested slower but at a more steady rate, not that they are qualitatively different. I do think if a person has to eat every 15 minutes, slow-burning carbs might help. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

[giotto]

How about some kind of time-release nutrients, like the time-release medicines or vitamins, but with dense carbs and fats instead? She could take some with each meal, and that way, her stomach would still have something to process, even after the regular food had left.

[philetus]

In fact, the 21-year-old from Austin, Texas, must eat every 15 minutes to stay healthy.

Something wrong with this statement

[Nepeta]

I do think if a person has to eat every 15 minutes, slow-burning carbs might help. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

This woman seems to have the metabolism of a human hummingbird, and in that case, she needs energy right now, not later, much as hummingbirds consume nectar or sugar water to keep up their strength while hunting insects.

Starch is the complex carbohydrate humans consume. We cannot do anything with cellulose, not the way cattle can.

"Junk food" isn't junk at all if you are active enough. Besides, some of the weird way the label is applied makes no logical sense--why is ice cream junk while yogurt virtuous? Why is pizza junk but spaghetti a meal? Start tearing food apart down to its components (I've done this for a living) and the label of "junk food" is rather freely applied. Cotton candy is junky--but some people think brown sugar is not, but they're both sucrose.

[aruanan]

Cotton candy is junky--but some people think brown sugar is not, but they're both sucrose.

White sugar is just brown sugar with the impurities removed.

[aruanan]

I wonder what her body temperature is. She’s probably expressing a high level of uncoupling proteins in the mitochondria, the result being an upregulation of the futile cycle. Infants have a certain amount of brown fat (looks that way because of the high number of mitochondria) that helps to maintain body heat. Perhaps whatever normally leads to the loss of this small amount of brown fat didn’t happen in her. This should give people pause who hope for a “solution” by which they can eat craploads of food without gaining weight. They would have to divert a significant amount of income to food purchase and spend a lot of time eating and preparing food to eat with the danger of losing weight and dying if they didn’t keep it up. There’s a reason for “a moment on the lips, forever on the hips.” It’s called survival.

[Nepeta]

White sugar is just brown sugar with the impurities removed.

Exactly so. White crystalline sugar goes through something like 100 recrystallizations to make it white. But if you make a solution with it, that solution is faintly yellow.

[krb]

Is that what it’s called when you don’t read the article?