How can I help my fat friend?

I really want to help my friend. He is so great in many respects. Kind, friendly, giving, extremely funny, original. However, he doesn't take good care of himself.


He has unkept hair, he is wearing really bad clothing, but most of all, he is extremely overweight. I'm guessing 150-170 kilos.

I know he wants a girl but he doesn't have one, understandably. He is considering gastric bypass but I don't think he will go through with it.

He says he has started to train but it won't help because he is eating junk food all the time. And when I was at his place, he was eating chocolate compulsory.

He looked down on the candy like it was a pair of nice women breast and started breathing very heavily when he ate. Almost like he had an orgasm. What's that about?

The reason I want to help him is because he hates his life. We go to a resturant and he can't sit at the table and has to find a new chair. We go to Disneyland and he has to walk out of the ride because he can't fit in it.

His quality of life is reduced.

So how do I go about helping him? When he mentioned the topic himself, I simply advised him what kind of food he should be eating and what to avoid, and how it is a lifestyle, not a diet. And he agreed. I didn't talk about it further because I didn't want to seem condescending, but kept the talk in a light tone so it would be easy to bring up again.

But 1 day later he buys a new burger and eats it as furiously as if he was having oral sex. It was pretty sick watching. I don't think it's just his fault though. He comes from a pretty inadequate family, and he even mentioned one time that his mother lost all of her teeths recently because she never brushes her teeths. And her grandmother lost all of her teeths when she was 29 and had to use fake teeths. The parents are also obese but not like their son. Taking care of yourself doesn't run in the family, but maybe he has an eating disorder?

Anyways, is there anything I can do? I know he wants to get fit himself but something is stopping him? He is a great guy and I hate to see him live a sad life like this, and that life may very well be over in a few years if he doesn't change things. I don't want to see him dead (though he himself said he wouldn't care if he died)

 

show him the "composition for beating obesity" thread that's somewhere in the H&F sub-forums

also consider a psychologist to help with his issues

 

Nothing. You don't get obese without some out-of-whack habits and mental/emotional attributes. It's not like it sneaks up on you. He's going to have to help himself.

You might try getting him into activities which could help, but without the drive to push himself hard enough to lose the weight in the first place, he'll likely sit out before he does a lot of good.

 

You can't help someone that doesn't want to help himself.

First though, you have to ask yourself, do you really want to put the time and effort into helping him? It seems that he will require tremendous effort on your part to give him that push into changing his life.

Is he educated? That plays an important role.

Tell him to have self-control. Presistance can bring down the tallest tree. He has to slowly build better habits so he can have a solid foundation and not the spur of the moment victory that would only last till he see's another food chain.

Call him at 5:00 am in the morning and go jogging/walking with him. Positively motivate him and if that doesn't work, use negative motivation to bitch-slap him with it.

In the end, it would still only matter if he really wants to change.

 

Maybe try to get him interested in a outdoor activity like fishing or camping. Maybe even just to get him to walk by a trail or lake path. Something has to trigger his self awareness or he's in for health and social problams down the road. Its great your trying to help your friend .You may be the only one he has.

 

from a fitness point of view, someone that big odds are they wont be able to do an exercise program. Get him walking 30-60 minutes a day. thats the first step. Do it for a month. If he can do that, he will loose weight and also it will put him in the right direction for a real weight loss program.

As for the psych aspect, fish is right. He will likely need to see a professional

 

This has a lot to do with his mental well-being, as others said. It seems a serious issue, seek professional advice/help if you can.

Get him addicted to activities that require better physical conditioning. His body is adjusted to, and craves, ****** food. As the body works harder, it naturally tells the subconscious it wants healthy crap. The hardest part is the transition...but once that's made, that healthy crap is pretty tasty and 'hits the spot.' The downside is that eating junk food is cyclic and is easy to fall back into. I drive by a McDonalds and the smell makes me want to vomit (I eat crappy food sometimes still, more than I should...but not that crappy of food).

Best of luck with your friend. Remember, create the need, explain what's in it for him. He has to want to change his lifestyle.

 

This is always difficult. Biggest problem is he has to want it, it can't be like a "you know I kinda wanna get in shape" those never work he has to be balls deep into this thing. Use the woman card to your advantage hell get him a woman workout partner get the testosterone a pumpin. His self-esteem is the ***** as others have said so give him a lot of positive encouragement if your working out with him. DONT LET HIM SLACK OFF keep him motivated and pumped up. I have a friend with the same kinda problem, his environment held him back. Slob parents + slob upbringing = usually a slob child. I know it will sound weird cause your a friend but you may have to teach him some hygiene. Get on his ass if he smells bad or is wearing dirty cloths. PEER PRESSURE!!! Use it in the situation. Hope this helps mate.

 

"He looked down on the candy like it was a pair of nice women breast and started breathing very heavily when he ate. Almost like he had an orgasm. What's that about?"

This made me laugh pretty hard.

Anyway, you could suggest a little-at-a-time sort of thing. For example, you could ask him what his least favorite junk food is (that he eats), and make an agreement that he won't eat anymore of it. Overtime you can tackle bigger obstacles, but with a small, bit-by-bit strategy.

I don't know how well this would work for him, but it got me off of all junk food, so I'd say it's worth a shot.

 

Taking care of yourself doesn't run in the family,

Yeah it does. How you are brought up has a massive effect on how you live as an adult. Not taking care of yourself is passed on "memetically" rather than "genetically" but it is passed on.

I don't think there is anything you can do mate. It's hard but you can't live people's lives for them.

 

Maroon him on a desert island for a few weeks!

Joking

Its all about will power at the end of the day, if he does not want to change, he wont.

On a brighter side, a friend of mine who was overweight by around 30+ kg, lost it all in about 2 years, mostly without exercise, primarily by completely cutting carbs (except sugars in fruit) out of her diet, and cutting the majority of saturated fats i.e. very little red meat, dairy.

Strangely though, her diet had almost no effect until about 10 months in, thereafter the weight started coming of very quickly, though the last few kg were harder to shift. She only started exercising about a year in, and not too extensively.

 

Here is how I got hooked on playing volleyball. A few years ago I had no interest in playing volleyball ever, though I had played a little when I was younger, I wouldn't have missed it if I could never play again.

Until one day when I was a janitor at a gym I worked at, two smokin hot chicks asked if I played and invited me to come and join them after work. To cut the story short, now I love playing volleyball.

Making exercise into a social event can be a great motivator and will take the focus off of losing weight and shift it to other things like winning the game, meeting people, having fun, ect...

 

Few years back (ok, 8) I was with a girl whose family was vegan. I spent three or four days of the week up her place, eating a vegan diet, and over something like 8 months I dropped about a stone, just for eating more healthy and cutting my snacking down (which was more due to the lack of snacks available than any deliberate effort on my part.)

So based on that, maybe you should cook him a vegan/vegetarian meal sometime, maybe for his birthday or something, and try to let him see for himself how tasty it can be, in the hopes he wants to eat more. That'll cut lots of calories out of his diet. Of course the snacking needs to go, or needs to drop. My incentive for this is, being diabetic, I have to inject to cover what I eat. Having to stab yourself for every snack is good incentive to eat less lol.

Do you have a dog? Tell him you're going away for the week and you'd like him to look after the dog, but the dog is energetic and needs to be walked for an hour every day. It's already been suggested that he start walking 30 to 60 minutes daily but if there's the added incentive of doing it for someone else (the dog and therefore you), it will feel perhaps like a chore, but he'll have more reason to do it.

Speaking of dogs, mine has just walked into my doorway and dropped a big squeaky ball at his feet and looked at me with big brown eyes, so I'd better go. Now he's whining. Aww.

 

I'm against an extreme diet like veganism because it does have serious long term health issues not well publicised by people who's agenda is animal welfare rather than health. When you're already obese with all the health issues that come with it trading these for new issues is never the best approach.

Make sure you differentiate between the fastest way to lose weight and the best way to lose weight. I don't just mean from a health perspective, but also from a motivational one. Start with something easy that will have a good effect and encourage him. Cutting sugar from his diet does this nicely and helps stem a lot of the cravings at the same time. Once he's used to that and seeing some benefit to what he's doing try to get rid of all refined carbs. After that go for trans fats and vegetable oil.

Also get him to get onsome scales so he can monitor his progress, there's nothing mre motivating than seeing how much heavier you were a couple of months ago. Chances are he'll get more interested as his weight improves and take up more important if time consuming activities like meal planning and calorie tracking. He'll also know what effect each slip up has on each weeks progress and be less likely to do this in future.

This is key really, as people have already said noone loses weight because they were nagged into it, they need to take control of their diet and know that they control it.

FWIW the only real prerequisite for obesity is the ability to not care about your weight. It gets very easy to avoid seeing yourself naked in the mirror and put the problem aside for later. I managed to get into an easily obese state when I was perfectly happy and in a solid relationship (getting married in June!) with no psychological or emotional problems. I was just enjoying myself and living on fast food and beer (a huge factor for me and bodyfat). The assumption that only people at a healthy body weight are happy is both flawed and hugely sterotyping.

 

Less seriously but still a valid point, carrot always works better than stick for fat people

and that's from an ex-fat guy!

 

Excellent post by coma there. Totally agree that a vegan diet really isn't a healthy way to go, too. Vegans tend to be healthier than people on a junk food diet by virtue of the fact that you can't really eat any worse than junk food, so anything is better by comparison. Couple that with the fact that vegans tend to be health-conscious (despite, IMO, the vegan diet itself being sub-optimal for human health) and so will have a greater tendency to avoid other unhealthy things like smoking and excessive drinking.

Just to add my own personal experience into the advice about cutting out sugar. I did a very low carb diet for the whole of Jan, Feb and March this year. It works exceptionally well. However, it does so by greatly reducing your hunger, allowing you to cut calories more easily. If you don't cut calories it won't work. It is still possible to get fat or make no progress on a low carb diet!

 

I used to be a little bit overweight some years ago. Nobody mentioned here yet the fact that junk food has textures, how it feels, that makes you wanna eat more. anyway my diet used to be crap but I read about the fact that junk food has a lot of strong flavors and textures that make ya wanna eat it. Then, I learned I can approximate the same strong mix of texture and flavor in a good tossed salad (cant go wrong with dill pickles, cheese, tomato onions and grilled chicken and bacon bits lol) and within a while I was hooked on salads and dont have an addiction to junk anymore.

 

Taste is an odd subject to be honest. A lot of people try to tailor diet plans around their tastes, but long enough on a change in daily foods and not only tastes but cravings improve. To illustrate, for January and february this year I only ate meat, fish and eggs. In march I bought a burger from McDs on a long road trip. I used to enjoy these but the bun tasted stale, the meat was bland and the salad was dull. My friends assured me the burgers were fine. I Also have no problem identifying good quality meat by taste alone now and I can usually tell what kind of fat a food has been cooked in.

 

You can't really help your friend. Anything you do will just confirm in his mind how useless he is because he's so crap his mates have to help him wash and eat properly. It's a self confirming diagnosis, a vicious circle. If you have told him these things and pointed him in the direction of professional help (counselling or therapy) then step away or he'll have you to blame when /if it doesn't work.