Comments on: Mom Of 555-Pound Teen Speaks Out

Jerri Gray Has Been Charged With Neglecting Her Teenage Son Alex

[Dgunner]

If you never eat a bite of red meat drink milk even as a infant keep it at a lowest intake level or eat a can of preserved overcooked can vegeatbles you will never slight yourself.I think the US government allows too much additives into our food supply and like tobbacco will go ignored until it kills afew million people and the taxpayers realize they are picking up the tab for the results of these deliberate innorances of the US government.This decade it is tobbacco and crack. Next decade it SHOULD be food additives and pharmacuticals.By the time the consumer wises up it will be too late save hundreds possibly millions and it be negligence of your own doing enabled by a government who wants so badly to be able to claim they feed thier masses with so much that they extra to send around the world. The cost hasn't began to be tallied in the sense of humna lives and those lives of the ignorant.

[toldyouso29]

As someone in trouble with their weight also I feel the need to say this, I've had a lifelong weight problem, it just doesn't go away. .. My ex would pile food on a plate three times as much as I ate and never would gain a pound. She was always 4' 11" and 98 lbs. On the other hand if I look at food I put on weight, so it's only reasonble it has to be metabolic in some way. This is not just a matter of laziness, believe me! .. Now I'm 57 years old and 418 lbs, my doctor wants me to have gastric bypass surgery, but I'm on Medicaid due to an on the job injury. Have any of you ever tried to get help while on Medicaid? Personally I look at Medicaid as a death certificate, sure you can get basic help if you have the flu or something, they paid for for my gall bladder removal, and yes I've been approved for a gastric bypass, but approval alone isn't enough! Try finding a doctor who will take what Medicaid decides is the right amount for that kind of surgery. I've called all over the country to no avail, even the major Barriatric Surgeons don't take Medicaid. They all say Medicaid doesn't pay them what it costs for them to do the surgery, therefore they can't afford to do it.

It's like dental care, Medicaid will pay to clean, fill, and pull only, nothing else. They'll allow you to go around with no teeth at all before they'd help you get a crown because they certainly won't pay for that.

This is one of my pet peeves about the USA, our Government will fund US Navy Hospital Ships to circle the globe giving free exoctic surgeries to people in 3rd world countries, but I can't get the help I need and I paid into the system all my working life via mandatory payroll withholdings. I'm 57 now and can't even use the system I paid into. Go figure, something is surely backwards about that!
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You DO have problems!!! But the main one is one you probably will never understand. For whatever reason, you are in a bind now--but that bind is of your own making. If you have been fat all of your life--you did some stuff to end up there. You speak of being on disability and Medicaid or Medicare paying for gall bladder surgery--but here's the rub:

WhatEVER makes you think the rest of us should pay for YOU to have any surgery of any sort? Because that is who the government is--it is the rest of us--working, staying small enough to work, going to work sick, leaving our kids to go to work, working with no health insurance or poor health insurance....WE paid for your gall bladder bill and now you complain that WE don't pay enough money to pay for YOUR gastric bypass.

Why do you think WE OWE YOU anything? Why don't you think that if you cannot afford the surgery from your own pocket or can't find a way to pay the money to make up the difference--why you should have that surgery. You are on disability? Then if you die to obesity, will the working pool miss you? Will the tax payers miss you?

Here is a harsh reality: NO ONE save those in a position of need through no fault of their own (like the mentally ill or handicapped or veterans) should EVER expect or accept government help for situations that their own ignorance or wilful behavior caused.

This is what entitlement does--it turned you from a heavy yet working man into a whining, you want us to pay for your surgery and can't understand why the gov doesn't fork over more money" person

But why in the world should the gov help you? You are a burden and you became a burden through your own actions (overeating?) the disability on top of that was/is a different issue. Many of us are getting tired of ultimately footing the bill for bad decisions that others have made--one of the reasons so many make these bad decisions is that belief that if all else fails, someone else will pick up your slack.

Evolution and all things being equal--those who do detrimental things should either evolve and survive on their own--in spite of what they did--or succumb and die--because it takes a lot of nerve on your part to expect the rest of us to pay for a surgery due to your overeating. We did not force you to become fat--so we owe you nothing in fixing the situation YOU put yourself in.

Try a big dose of personal responsibility and if you are not bedridden--try finding a job that allows you to make money just typing at a computer or working at home--maybe you can make enough money to pay the difference or better yet, get off disability and go back to work--and get private insurance, like other taxpayers.

[toldyouso29]

This is an excellent point--and for those who do not face weight problems--they should understand that the use of growth hormones in meat or plants is outlawed in Europe and Japan. People should also know that cancers of any type are unmitigated growth at the cellular level. GH instigate unnatural growth at the cellular level.

To fatten pigs, lamb and cows, high grain or carb diets are given, laced with growth hormones, Same type of stuff are in our veggies, Because cancer is nothing more than normal cells going wild with growth--one has to wonder if there is a connection between the food we eat laced with hormones and cancer and growth in height and weight of humans--after all, most drugs reside in the fat and tissue of those who take them--where do we think the residuals from the growth hormones go, after we harvest the plants and animals? Do we think we have some sort of nutritional "you can't affect me" card?

[toldyouso29]

Susan, that is you and YOUR metabolism. Try to remember that what is your personal experience is just that--YOUR personal experience. What food does for and to YOU is not the same as the hormonal/biochemical/metabolic response in another. Lack of empathy means the inability to put yourself in another's place. When you think 'if you can do it' so can someone else or you think 'what happens to you and what you feel about it should be the same thing another feels about it' you are NOT putting yourself in their place--you are imposing your perception of their life, with the results from your own version.

For some people gaining weight takes very little, for others a lot. I was skinny all of my life and after 40 started gaining. Not a lot, by most people's standards, but as a skinny person, humongous by my own standards (40 lbs overweight at the highest) What I have learned and could never understand is the fluctuation my body can make, the detrimental effects of yo yo dieting and the rebound effect and most of all, the true danger of starvation or low calorie dieting. What people do not understand is that a persons body is constantly undergoing evolution and learning--as you diet, you enter into an adversarial relationship with your own body. EAch time you diet, your body learns the method and attempt to defeat it. It only knows one imperative: store fat for lean times. It does not realize it is working in opposition to you. So each diet you start, it learns how to circumvent and defeat, until you can be on a low cal diet and NOT lose at all until you are starving. There are actually case studies of obese people being hospitalized and denied food for up to 2 weeks and barely losing a pound--of course eventually, the body will shed weight--but the fact is, often the methods must get more and more extreme to "trick" your body into losing weight. As it learns the trick or you go back to eating regularly, it not only regains the pounds with a vengeance, but often, adds on even more.

Anyway, at about 300 lbs, if this boy ate anything more than a few crackers he was likely to not lose or to gain. The problem actually started when he was much smaller--now it is a snow ball going down a slippery slope.

[toldyouso29]

by CLoverNYC1 June 25, 2009 1:49 PM PDT
Muddie,

Crude? No. Honest. Yes, and you know it.

Notice the mother isn't 555 lbs, so one of them has a far higher caloric intake than the other.

The real question is this - and it's a question that blacks have a really hard time answering in about 70% of their households - where is his father?

Don't try to inject your racism into this. What does the "father" have to do with obesity? There are plenty of two parent families with obese kids. Several things to note:

1. Mom is smaller because though she may eat the same things she MOVES around more being that she is working. Exercise BURNS calories.

2. Son is too large to move, so whatever he eats just goes into storage.

3. Over 65% of all American babies born now are to single mothers--that would be mothers of all races and since Blacks make up less than 15% of our population--the majority of those babies with no "fathers" are white.

3. Men don't get fat? YOu think a father being there or not being there would make a difference? In what way? How do you know that dad would not be just as fat or fatter than the son?

4. I have yet to see too many man as the cooks in the family or noticed dads deciding what type of food is eaten in a household

5. Are there no white morbidly obese children? If so, are black fathers also to blame for them being fat? If not, are white fathers to blame for not being there when they are fat?

you lose your own credibility when you start equating issues with color because most issues have NOTHING to do with race but do have a lot to do with outlook. YOu have no grounds to talk unless there are :


A. NO two parent families with morbidly obese kids

B. No single white moms with morbidly obese kids

C. No morbidly obese dads or dads who raise morbidly obese kids

Further--to the welfare issue--less than 3 million Americans of all races are presently on welfare. there are over 42 million blacks in the country, over 46 million Hispanics, over 200 million whites--this means less than 1% of Americans of all races combined are on welfare.

Yet over 65% of Americans are overweight and over 13% of children are morbidly obese. Do you think the majority of them are black? If not, where the fathers are will not matter according to your formula.

What you have done, is taken an issue to do with a WORKING mother and her poor inability to help her son or herself make proper food choices or see the danger she has placed her child in--and made it about race and economics--and yet--elizabeth taylor and Kirstie Alley are white and fighting obesity. Chastity Bono is fat and Mama Cass's fat killed her--all white. John Belushi and others were white, fat and are now --dead. Was it their father's fault too?

Get this : obesity, like most human maladies knows no gender, race or age distinction. Try to shelve your bigotry.

As for the food stamp issue--I agree that unhealthy foods should not be allowed. I also believe those who choose to partake of an unhealthy lifestyle either through food, activities, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes or prosmicuity should live and die by their own choices, footing their own bill with no subsistence from the rest of us--and I, unlike you, KNOW that those who fit that description include every race, every gender and moms and dads.

Muddie is right--you are not only crude, you are a bigot.

[toldyouso29]

No--it s the type of food. A baked potato with or without butter still translates into 1/4 cup of pure sugar in your body--this accelerates the metabolic pathway to do with insulin. The insulin pathway activates the liver to store cholesterol and the body to store fat. All excess calories are stored as fat. Sugar is a poison. Insulin is utilized to neutralize the poison. Sugar is also instant energy for the cells but it also destroys them, over time, it takes more insulin to neutralize the same amount of sugar so that sooner or later, a lot of people's insulin does not work--ergo Type II diabetes (which often turns into Type I)

The point? Diets focused on protein initiate the glucagon pathway which is a fat burning pathway. But too many ketones (what happens when fat and protein are burned) can damage the kidneys if not enough fluids are drunk. It is ALWAYS what we eat as well as the amount. If a person ate a diet focused solely on carbs but limited their intake, of sugar and carbs from birth to about 40, they could still develop Type II diabetes, just like obese people.

WHAT is eaten matters as much as how much, anything in moderation is always better than too much--caffiene, sugar and saturated fats should be limited. Other than satiation, there is no redeeming qualities to most snack chips or sugared products or sodas.

[toldyouso29]

If you are a dr--you are a poor one. You would know that after 300 lbs, a person can gain with little to no effort and not eating very much. It has to do with a shot metabolism which dictates how much energy is expended and the number of calories required to do that. A calorie is a calorie is a calorie has now found NOT to be true. Calories from protein are harder for a body to garner and take longer to turn into a useable form than a calorie from fat or carbs. Sugar is instantly converted and therefore it is the easiest to put on weight (what the body does not use is immediately stored) carbs, being pure sugar when metabolically broken down is the next easiest, then fat (which breaks down to ketones) then protein which takes the longest to work. This is the secret of protein focused, low carbed diets. ALL excess calories are stored as fat. The body needs a certain amount of calories just to maintain itself and the rest is stored if not used in exercise or moving around.

When a person is severely obese, it gets even more complicated. The body needs more calories to maintain its bulk but even more scary, the body continually works to use less calories so that it can store more--the human body actually THINKS it is doing a good thing by storing as much fat as it can.

Severely obese people, find over time, that if they eat even a low cal meal, they can gain or not lose and so must go lower and lower in calories until they literally must starve themselves to lose. People do not realize that gastric bypass surgery works because people eat 8 to 10 teaspoons of food in a day. Often throwing up part of that. So they starve their body --forcing it to use up its "precious fat reserves". The problem is that the body panics when it has to use up its reserves and continues to try to find ways to 'save' or restore what it lost.

Vicious circle. Show me any 300 lb person who is not actively dieting and I could predict with pretty good accuracy, their prognosis at 400 to 500 lbs within the next 5 years. I do blame the mother for neglecting her child--but the neglect did not start at 555 lbs, it started when he was very young, and maybe 25 to 50 lbs overweight--after that, the obesity train really takes off--and except in extraordinary circumstances, it is a life long battle to stop it--most people fail and continue to gain weight inexorably. In the 1970's --less than 35% of all Americans were overweight, now over 65% are overweight. The same thing is happening in every country where Coca Cola and McDonalds has set up shop and become the meal of choice.

[aChangeOfIdeas]

I am so tired of hearing the excuses for being fat - can't afford healthy food? Have they even TRIED to do any price comparison? The lower my food budget gets, the healthier we eat at my house. Don't have time to prepare healthy meals/snacks? Please. Even McDonald's has salads (maybe not the best, but...) and a bag of carrot sticks is just as easy to buy as a bag of chips. And cheaper too. It's all excuses.
Yes, government has the right to interfere in a kid's life. If he was being starved they would. If he was being beaten, they would. If he was being left home alone at a young age, they would. It's not like they are targeting all overweight kids in this situation, this is one extraordinary situation. I'm so annoyed that taxpayers are going to have to pay to fix yet another bad parenting situation.

[toldyouso29]

It's not like they are targeting all overweight kids in this situation, this is one extraordinary situation. I'm so annoyed that taxpayers are going to have to pay to fix yet another bad parenting situation."

Take a good look around you--this is still questionable. The reason being that this young man is not the only morbidly obese kid in that state. Do they have the rest of the parents in custody? Did they remove the rest of the kids from the household? I have yet to visit any state and not seen kids so huge that they needed a scooter to get around. He is not the only extreme case. If they felt a need to step in for this case but have not done the same to others in similar condition, then their actions are unconstitutional---being that all men (and women) are equal under the law. Parity, is an issue here.

[toldyouso29]

Why do you have the right over 18? The gov will still end up footing the bill and the rest of us will pay for the care of hospital bills and increased insurance premiums. People have the right to do what they want--as long as they and ONLY they have to pay for and be parties to the aftermath. Meaning they foot their own bills, have separate insurance or have a rider and if they end up dying--it is their own fault, same goes for cigarette smokers and alcohol drinkers and drug users and sex nuts. But then, the American way is to want to do whatever they want and then have the rest of the country shell out for the repercussions. It's called not taking responsibility. The costs to the tax payer will be no different if your mom makes you fat or you get there on your own then expect the rest of us to pay for it.

[toldyouso29]

more kids smoke cigarettes than have eating disorders, and cigarettes are proven to be just as dangerous not only to the child, but to others around them who breathe their secondhand smoke."

You are soooo wrong. Less than 25% of ALL Americans young or old, now smoke cigarettes. Over 65% of all children in the US are overweight. Anyone who is overweight has an eating disorder, in that they are compelled to eat the wrong foods and their body reflects that. Severe obesity and anorexia or bulimia are extreme cases of the eating disorders but no one wakes up a stick or blimp--both require the disorder to have been ongoing for quite some time--unaddressed and unnoticed. The fact of the matter is, from eating way too many starches or sugar (carbs/starches ARE almost 90% sugar with a bit of fiber thrown in) or junk food eating--ALL of that is a disorder.
The problem is--Americans do not recognize a problem in its early stages and only recognize and want to control a problem after it has grown to almost impossible proportions.

Allowing a child to get overweight is abuse and truly abuse when a person is not just obese but morbidly so. The problem is (and many people do not realize this) but after a person gets to about 280 lbs on a certain frame, the disease picks up and even if the person tries not to eat the body learns to conserve and store whatever is eaten anyway.

This is why many people have to go to more and more extreme measures to lose weight, Overtime, the human body can gain weight or maintain a weight even on a 1000 calorie a day diet. When you see people losing weight with bands, they essentially are on a 300 to 600 calorie a day diet and literally starve themselves smaller. The avg person without the hormonal imbalance of obesity needs about 1200 cal to maintain their weight, but a morbidly obese person could gain on less than that.

this mother, is no different than many other mothers. Her son may way over 500 lbs, but in that state and many others, there are children weighting in the high 200s or 300s and they will be on their way--who is arresting them or saving their children? Or do we only weight until they reach a quarter ton? The prognosis for this young man, even with this late intervention is death--before age 30. IN fact, once an adult, he may get even larger before dying.