“Somehow I don’t think she was going to live very long either way. I guess I can understand people gradually ballooning up to 250, 300 pounds over the course of their lives. 980 pounds - and only 25 years old? I don’t think so. I don’t know if she had some underlying cause for her weight gain, but I will take a guess and say that she was eating more than necessary. Surely by time she reached 400 pounds someone should have come in and stopped her weight gain. There is something mentally and/or physically wrong with you if you gain that much weight.
I’m actually the heaviest person in my family, at 182 pounds. A year and a half ago, I was only 145 pounds.”
I think there’s a tipping point, where your blood chemistry and metabolism is just completely out of control, and your body just gets over efficient at storing fat. Also, those morbidly obsese can have a significant amount of weight added from fluid buildup in their bodies, a lot of times they experience massive weight loss when the fluids drain. These people are in conditions that have nothing similar to someone who’s 20,40 even 100 lbs overweight, this is massive abuse of the body and the effects are widespread, it takes more than just cutting a few meals to tackle their situations.
Having said that, she probably did have enablers. Any documentaries I’ve seen about the morbidly obsese generally hints heavily at a spouse or family enabling them. Not all, but many of them. She had kids, who were probably the ones who later on fed her. Most of them lose weight when put in calorie controlled environments, so it’s a behavioral problem most of the time, IMHO. I suspect they have emotional damages similar to anorexics and cutters, it just maniftests itself through insatiable appetites and a refusal to care for themselves, an almost psychotic inability to control their eating or weight gain.
Shame she had to die, so young, sad for her kids. I hope they don’t have similar issues later on, eating disorders can be learned at the feet of mom and dad very easily. I sometimes wonder if it’s suicide by the fork, as opposed to the knife.
REading the story, turns out it was a mixture of things:
She had a car wreck that destroyed her leg, and she could’nt walk. Add in a healthy diet of medications, and depression, and you get lots of extra weight.
She was said to eat 8 hamburgers at a sitting. Enablers.
She said she’d eat until it hurt. There’s a disease, where you never feel full.
Married at 15, first kid by 16. Emotional trainwreck.
On a side note, I had someone tell me their theory. She said she thought a lot of women from unhappy childhoods and dysfunctional backgrounds will get pregnant and gain massive amounts of weight to drive the father and other people away - they only want the unconditional love of the kids, and shut everyone else out. They become housebound, because they want to be.
Dunno. Could be.
I am always amazed at people who cannot understand how a person gains so much weight..... energy in + no energy output = stored energy (aka fat).
Being morbidly obese is an extreme mental illness.
I had to help remove a 800 pound man once who died in his bed. It was sickening to see (and smell) the horrible conditions a person like that lives in. We had to knock out two walls to remove his body. The floor had rotted out underneath the bed in places from human waste.
Stories like this are sad but think about the cost to her children and its even more tragic. I dealt with a few families that were all morbidly obese and it seems to be a continuing cycle in many cases.
It’s bad for society as well since they are usually declared disabled so the gov’t (read taxpayers) takes care of them.
I hope and pray her children break the cycle.
My sister is over 400 lbs. She can no longer do things like tie her own shoes. She is on SSI for a number of reasons. The government (aka taxpayer) pays for her enablers. She gets an "aide" to help her with tasks at home and grocery shopping.
I've heard of people who are constantly hungry, no matter how much they eat. Those are people who need assistance. And accountability.