It does if your weight is three times that of a normal person. There is absolutely no way an ambulatory child can maintain a weight of 208 lbs. unless he’s eating far more calories than what a normal weight 8-year old child is eating.
So you are seriously saying this child will maintain his weight with the 1,385 calories that the average eight year old eats? And that he gained these calories by bumping that up a twinkie to around 1,535?
Hell, if he can maintain his weight then go for it. Eventually, in the next ten years or som, he will grow into simply being “pretty darn obese” rather than “so massively obese that it has rendered him disabled.”
He’s also a little boy who’s in danger of developing some life threatening conditions.
First, IF that were the case, then they shouldn’t even have Twinkies in the house in the first place. Second, a person cannot gain a pound from eating something that only weighs an ounce. Not unless you’re a perpetual motion machine.
I highly doubt they’re giving the kid carrots and celery. (Hell, the latter has negative calories, IIRC).
When the kid’s parents aren’t neglecting his health.
Could ask you the same question. Is it before or after the kid’s eaten himself to death? 'Cos, y’know, 200# by age eight, what’s to stop it being 300# at 10, 400# at 12… just barely a pound a week, but after a while this is going to add up to real obesity.
I think the family needs to complete a nutrition course before they can get the kid back (I also think the kid needs to lose a significant amount of weight first, and everyone involved needs counseling).
Not just a nutrition course. I knew nutrition. I didn’t understand the societal and familial pressure that there is to give your child ‘treats’ or understand the underlying psychological issues that were driving my poor daughter to food.
Nutrition is only a small part of the problem.
As to the math, if the kid weighs 200 pounds he can maintain that weight by eating far more calories than a 60 pound eight year old. Using random BMR Calculator (and assuming he is about 4 foot four which is about average for 8), he can eat 1915 calories to keep his weight stable without doing any exercise. If he weighed 75 pounds (just under overweight for that height), he could only eat 1138 calories. In other words, this kid can eat 800 more calories than his peers AND NOT GAIN WEIGHT. That means he is eating FAR MORE THAN THAT because he is gaining weight.
If the parents are missing that much food going into their kid, they are neglectful. We’re not talking one twinkie or trading food at lunch. We’re talking a box of twinkies or a family size bag of chips EACH DAY. Are you telling me you wouldn’t know that? Are you telling me that if your kid was this far gone and their weight was still going up you wouldn’t be more diligent? Are you telling me that if CPS was ALREADY INVOLVED you wouldn’t find a way?
What’s lost are the number of posters who simply ignore that the mother was following the program, the child lost weight, and then he gained it back.
What’s also lost is how easy it is to gain 10 lbs back. I showed how few calories it took over time to gain that weight back.
No, you’re simply wrong. regardless of what weight he is at, he will maintain that weight by taking in the same amount of calories he’s burning. Considering his weight he isn’t going to be burning too many calories in his condition. If he burns 1000 calories a day I’d be surprised. That means he only needs to consume 1000 calories a day to maintain his weight.
Did you notice that they didn’t take the kid out of the home until it became obvious by the fact of the child’s weight gain that she wasn’t following the program. Again, CPS did not remove him until the mother demonstrated that she was neglecting his medical needs by allowing him to relapse into weight gain. CPS was monitoring the family for a year before the child was removed which did not occur until after he started gaining weight while under doctor’s care.
Get it now?
It’s been explained to you several times by several posters so I’m chalking this up to willful ignorance.
bullshit. He’s not burning a lot of calories. He doesn’t need to take in a lot of calories to maintain his weight. 1000 calories burned, a 1000 calories consumed = no change in weight. 1000 calories burned, 1250 calories taken in = weight gained. Pick any base number burned/consumed and nothing changes in the equation.
What part of this don’t you understand?
On second thought, stop pulling numbers out of your ass and you do the math. Average height for an 8 year old is 4’1". How may calories does a 4’1" 8 year old who weighs 208 lbs have to eat to maintain his weight? Let’s assume the child is sedentary (although most children are not and it’s safe to assume his doctor has prescribed moderate exercise). I get 2171 calories. Do you see that? So, if the child eats less than 2171 calories and doesn’t get any extra exercise, he’ll lose weight. Still with me? If the child eats more than 2171 calories and doesn’t get any extra exercise, he gains weight.
Now, let’s see how much an average 8 year old needs to consume to maintain weight. Let’s also assume they are sedentary (unusual, I know). Based on this, let’s be generous and say an average 8 year old boy is 65 lbs. Now, let’s calculate the calories required to maintain this weight with no additional exercise. I get 1391 calories. Did you get that? So, if this boy eats more than 1391 calories with no additional exercise, he gains weight right?
Let’s do some simple math. What is 2171 calories less 1391 calories? 780 calories, right? So the 208 lb child must eat 780 more calories than the 65 lb child just to maintain his weight. There are 150 calories in a Twinkie. Therefore, 208 lb child must eat more than 5 Twinkies more than the 65 lb child to maintain his weight. That’s a box of Twinkies every two days or more than 3 boxes per week.
But he was gaining weight. How many more Twinkies than most kids did that kid have to be eating (Twinkies being solely an example of a unit of calories)? More than five.
Again, the number chosen doesn’t change my point. using 2170 as the base number he’s consuming/burning he’s not blowing the number out. He lost 10 lbs and gained it back and it doesn’t take much in the way of additional calories for that to happen. There was no indication in the article that he was continuing to gain weight unabated. The followup article posted said he lost “some” weight. Sounds to me like he lost the 10 lbs again. Hardly justification for taking him away from his parents.
You’re confusing a bad situation that is stabilized with one that is not.
You’re arguing as if he’s eating what a normal kid would eat and then making the difference up in twinkies. He’s eating what someone who weighs 200 lbs would eat. His fluctuating weight is going to be plus or minus the extra calories associated with that weight. He’s going through what every overweight person goes through and it’s not going to happen quickly. On top of that he’s gaining weight naturally as he grows so even if he maintains his BMI he will still gain weight with normal growth.
You’re jumping to a lot of conclusions. The decision was made after one year of working with the family while the child was under a doctor’s care. Do you have any evidence whatsoever that CPS made the decision to remove the child without heeding the medical advice of the child’s physician?
If he gained the weight back that he’d initially lost, how well do you think the family was adhering to the medical plan? Do you want us all to believe that nothing had changed and mom was doing everything right, despite the lackluster results? I really don’t understand your motivation for continuing to belabor this point.
No more than you’re concluding the opposite.
I make the point because they did indeed stop his out of control weight gain and that it’s traumatic to take an 8 year old child away from his parents. They’re going to mess this kid up.
Nope, not me. That was you.
I simply took your example and demonstrated that that your one extra twinkie over what a normal kid eats is fantasy. He isn’t eating just one extra twinkie, if he were and nothing else, he’d be running at a caloric deficit as the math above so handily demonstrates.
I guess what you seem to be missing is that goal here is not for him to maintain his weight, but to lose it. It’s not supposed to happen quickly which is why he’s under a doctor’s care and, more than likely, has a nutrition plan. So, he shouldn’t be eating what a 200 lb person would eat. He needs to be eating less than that, exercising much more or both. The fact that he didn’t maintain his weight loss, but instead reversed it, indicates one or both of those requirements were not being met. But the kid is eight. That’s totally understandable. What is not acceptable is that the mother apparently doesn’t have the motivation or wherewithal to be sure her kid is keeping to a medical plan that will ultimately result in the elimination of at least one completely preventable health issue, the breathing difficulties, and potentially a quite a few more serious ones.
In any case, according to the Mayo Clinic, the rate of weight loss that is considered safe and reasonable is 1-2 lbs per week. Under a doctor’s care and during the time CPS monitored the family, it would have been reasonable to expect the child to have lost 52 to 104 lbs. This report indicates that the boy gained 60 lbs in one year, slightly more than 1 lb per week. That’s very fast weight gain for a child. He began losing weight while he was hospitalized for two weeks due to severe breathing problems brought on by his condition. Two weeks in the hospital. :eek:
According to court documents, he continued to lose weight for a brief time following the hospitalization, but subsequently began gaining it back at a rapid pace in the months preceding the removal. That can only mean, as CPS determined, that the parent was neglecting the child’s nutritional needs by allowing him to consume too many calories to support continued weight loss. She couldn’t even be bothered to take him to appointments and weigh-ins associated with the health program
he was enrolled in to help him control his weight.
I think it’s important to point out that CPS was not acting alone in this removal and the removal was upheld by a family court judge. But there were a number of medical personnel involved in this intervention, including endocrinologists and nutrition experts.
They did not stop his out of control weight gain and he’s been removed due to the fact that his mother could not be bothered to properly care for him. Yeah, I’d say that’d mess a kid up. Don’t blame CPS, blame the mother. She had over a year of supervision to attend to his medical needs and let him down.
I believe the article said 20 months. That’s almost 2 years.
You know what else is traumatic?
It’s traumatic to be 8 years old and rendered disabled- barely able to walk up a flight of stairs, gasping and choking when you nod off, and needing to be plugged into a machine just to get through the night.
For all we know, his family could have a lot of drama and he could be happy to have a break from it- I had friends growing up who looked forward to bouts of foster care because their screwy families got overwhelming and it was nice to have some time not dealing with your mom’s drug addiction, or sexual abuse, or having to be the sole caretaker for a passel of siblings.