So they can roll them to the other side?
To watch apologists feign offense and cuss in the pit?
To create a re-enactment of Monty Python’s ‘Meaning of Life’?
Push the warranty on their Tepur-Pedic mattress to the max?
There’s no room in the dumpster for rib bones?
Because 20 Big Macs have too many carbs?
The just placed a put option order on KFC stocks?
They sell the bones back to the Yankee Harven Chicken stock company?
To prepare for the soon to be announced casting call for Austin Powers IV?
To keep her from eating the baby.
There’s also the under-documented phenomenon of “feederism,” which gets discussed in fat-acceptance venues and rarely anywhere else (that I’ve ever seen, anyway) - the idea of feeding an object of desire to make them fatter (and, from the feeder’s point of view, more desirable, I guess). Another form of control.
Self protection?
My mom was bed ridden for a while (not due to obesity), but we were able to get her to the bathroom.
What of the bodily functions of a 700 lb woman who eats 20 pieces of chicken/day?? CICO :eek:
…it’s only wafer thin…
On a really insecure note, I’ve known men and women who’ve fattened their mates because they didn’t want them to be as attractive to others. (One acquaintance goes from one of the most loving wives you’d ever want to meet to an absolute henpecking psycho-bitch whenever her husband starts going to the gym and slimming down and getting better looking [he’s a cute guy, but especially so when he’s less chunky and more toned].)
I know this is a horrible thing to say at this moment, but this thread is making me hungry. 
[Jake Blues] I’ll have four fried chickens…and a Coke [/Jake Blues]
We had a patient a few years ago who may have made it to the Guinness book if we had ever been able to get an accurate weight on him; he was in the hospital for several weeks before he was no longer topping out the 1000-lb. scale. He was known to everyone in the hospital, regrettably enough, as “Tiny”.
He had stroked out by the time he got to the hospital, but our estimation is that he could not have gotten out of bed after about 6-700 pounds, and at 8-900, it’s hard to imagine that he could have even put food in his mouth on his own. Yet he went on for what was probably 2-300 pounds after that.
I’ve thought about it a lot since then, and I see covers of the same tune all the time. Family members buy smokes for the COPDers, buy booze for the alcoholics, and give money to the obvious junkies. I’ve seen sweet little Baptist grandmothers flat out lie about back pain so they can get narcotics for their junkie grandkids, and others with legit cancer pain who give away their Percoset to the junkies.
One observation–it is rarely a one-way street. Usually the recipient is skilled at manipulation, often through guilt or annoyance. Sometimes, it isn’t even a conscious manipulation; their need is so great that they do what they have to do to get it.
In the end, though, it is hard to withhold something from someone you love when he expresses a need for it. It’s one thing to talk about holding out for his own good, but in the end it’s usually a lot harder than that. I mean, an equally good question is why would a 400-pound man feed himself 20 pieces of chicken, and the answer is about the same–because he really wants it, and he’ll feel lousy if he doesn’t get it.
DoctorJ’s post sounds very familiar. Among others in my family, my mom was within spitting distance of four hundred pounds before she had a gastric bypass (it is NOT the easy or lazy way to lose weight, btw). Mom still got around just fine, but whenever she tried to restrict her eating, with a diet usually, she could be a mess.
She’d be angry and the rest of us didn’t know whether to shit or go blind because just our *breathing * pissed her off. Mom’s anger focused on you is not a good thing and she wouldn’t have to get out of her chair to make you sorry. Mom didn’t like being angry at us and genuinely tried not to be unreasonable, but she couldn’t keep a lid on her frustration 24/7, for months at a stretch.
Then there was when not eating made her frantic. It was horrible to see her fighting so hard to resist her cravings since they obsessed her all day long, sometimes even in her dreams. Mom is not a weak woman, yet she’s said more than once that when it was bad, she wanted to eat the whole world. She didn’t care if it killed her, didn’t care that it would hurt us terribly to lose her, she had to have food.
To make her feel better, I’d have brought her what she wanted so that she wasn’t in pain, mentally speaking. It was her medicine, or her fix, and while I’d not have bought her drugs, I’d have provided food for her the way I’d make sure she got her meds for any other ailment.
I’d like to think that we’d have tried to feed her a little less than 20 pieces of chicken at a time and we’d get her to the doctor for help. The thing is, we didn’t stop her when she was eating eight pieces of chicken and didn’t get her help when she weighed four hundred pounds. In my family, when it came to food, you accepted the other person’s decision. In light of all that, I can understand why people were bringing the woman in the OP food.
Deep breath OK so I was watching Dr Phil over a year ago when he was pushing his weight loss book. He had on a 600lb woman who moved from her bed to her Lay-Z-Boy and back. this woman was so good at manipulation that she even convinced Dr Phil’s camera crew to bring her Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
It is hard to deny your loved ones, I know, but random people you meet through your job? That woman must have been good. I never saw the follow-up episode, but she has a serious future as a saleswoman if she survives.
One good thing - the medical world is adapting to the supersized patient.
I was in the docs’ lounge today and somebody had left off a bariatric supply catalog (“bariatric” is a term derived from the Greek word for really really fat). It contained info on all the tables and devices now available for dealing with morbidly obese patients.
My favorites were the Hercules operating table (it can handle people weighing up to 1,000 pounds) and the Air Pal patient lift (1,200 lbs capacity). More info here.
I don’t know if this counts as enabling, but one hospital I used to work at opened a brand new bariatric surgery unit (offering bypass surgery, gastric banding etc.). They announced an open house over the public address system, urging people to drop by for a tour. Plus pastry and cookies. :dubious:
Oh doctors and nurses can be among some of the heaviest people you’ll see. Long hours, stress, lots of bad food at strange times of day can do that to you. A friend of ours was average sized until she started her residency. She’s been at about 300 most of the time since.
My dentist has cookies and sweets in her waiting room…
My mom works in pre-op at a tiny hospital. Their operating table is rated a mere 400 lbs, and they have to turn people away suprisingly often.
I know a fellow (a friend of my sister’s) who is paying $18,000 to have a gastric band done. He’s perhaps 5’9 and weighs about 280 lbs… I honestly didn’t know they performed them for people that small (I mean, he’s very fat, but again grocery store fat- no circus recruiter would look twice at him). Also, I have known him for many years and in that time he has really never made a particular attempt at dieting and exercising. He’s also slightly dummer than a bottle of Clorox. I’ve actually wondered if he’s being taken advantage of by a corrupt doctor.
The indications for gastric bypass surgery are a BMI over 35 with complications related to the obesity (diabetes, sleep apnea, etc.) that will improve, or a BMI over 40.
At 5’9" and 280, his BMI is 41; he definitely qualifies.
It’s easier than feeding a 20 pound relative 700 pieces of chicken: they tend to choke on the bones around the halfway mark.