360-lb family member... No plans to lose weight. Odds of heart attack?
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Anonymous
| What are the health outcomes of a 50-yo who has been in the 350 lb range for the last fifteen years? And when should we expect the chips to fall? It will be so very difficult on his mother and father. It has been very difficult for our whole family. We have begged him to go to OA, exercise, anything and he will try for a week or two and then give up... |
Anonymous
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You need to leave him alone. He has to do it for himself, not his parents or you or whoever.
My grandmother just died last year at age 91. She weighed over 400 pounds for the last 35 or so years of her life. |
Anonymous
| I have a relative like this too. He is about 375 and eats horribly. He's in his early forties and won't take any action. A timebomb. |
Anonymous
| I have a 70+ year old relative like this. Now, he can barely move, has diabetes and congestive heart failure, but still going. |
Anonymous
| Being morbidly obese shortens your life for the vast majority of people, but of course there are exceptions. No way to predict. |
Anonymous
| My father was like this. He died at 78 and he did not die from anything related to his weight. |
Anonymous
| I have a niece in her 30s same weight range. Wish I, or her parents, had any clue of a way to help her. |
Anonymous
+1. My aunt died around this weight when she was 55 after being forced into early retirement a year earlier due to health complications. Her cause of death was collapsed lungs, not a heart attack. The family tried everything a human being can imagine - just as with other addictions, sometimes interventions do more harm than good, sometimes they just fail, and sometimes they take. My husband is currently hovering just over 300 lbs at 40, and I'm constantly on edge but keeping my mouth shut other than to be supportive when he brings it up, 
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Anonymous
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MYOB.
What do you think will happen OP? Do you think he will say, "wow! I didn't know being this overweight was unhealthy! thanks for the info! I will go lose weight now because the veil has been lifted from my eyes..." |
Anonymous
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Life Line Screening
The gift for anyone you love. |
Anonymous
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Low.
I have an extended family full of people in that eight range or above. They rarely exert themselves so sudden heart attack with no warning at all isn't likely to happen unless they suddenly exert themselves seriously. |
Anonymous
OP, let your grown-up relative and their doctor manage their health. They know better than you what the right advice is.
Most people I love would rather have the $200 than a bunch of test that are not medically necessary. LifeLine and HealthLink are just a way to line the pockets of the companies that own the equipment and prey on the fears of consumers. Unless you're a retirement-age smoker, in which case one of the tests could have value, total waste of time and money. |
Anonymous
| OP, so many people go on "The Biggest Loser" tv show and have access to all the support, motivation and information anyone could ever want. It's quite amazing how much they have. And yet there are many contestants that fail to lose much weight at all OR they lose a significant amount, only to have re-gained it back years later. I say all this to get you to see that there's not much you can do other than to be caring and kind and open to where he is right now in his life. |
Anonymous
+1 Fat people know they're fat. They don't need you to point it out to them. The messaging about thin = healthy and obesity being a mark of poor character/control is everywhere, too, so reign in the shaming. |
Anonymous
Thin is much healthier than morbidly obese (unless you're anorexic). I don't hear the OP shaming his/her relative. The concern comes from a place of love and concern. We would like our relatives to live a quality, relatively long life and wish we could do something to help. |