The 34-stone teenager really makes me think. I cannot begin to imagine 34 stone.
Supposedly I am two and a half stone overweight (about 15 kilos or 35 pounds). If I lost that amount you'd be able to see my ribs, at least according to people with whom I share that fact. When I was cycling all over the place, including up the hills on campus, or when I was at the gym/swimming pool four times a week, and was toned and without wobble I was a more than a stone overweight. But I could not imagine being twice my supposed 'target' weight.
I have seen people's weight balloon, often as a result of childbirth or medication eg steroids, or physical injury or depression. And indeed this article makes reference to the death of her grandmother being the obvious cause. To which my immediate reaction is 'many teenagers lose grandparents, indeed I know loads of people who lost parents in their teens, get over it'.
But that's unfair. It may have only been a trigger for a deep seated psychological problem. I can only assume as well that there were psychological problems within the family. She's not tubby, plump or even a lard arse. She was three times the weight of most of her contemporaries. I guess there comes a point in obesity where the effort involved to exercise, any exercise, is too much. When even walking down the road is impossible. If someone is a shut-in, living alone, it is so easy for the problem to go unnoticed.
It appears to me that her family did nothing. If she attended school, why didn't the school do something? If she stayed away from school, why didn't the Truancy Officer do something? Or her GP. Maybe her family couldn't cope "I'd throw a tantrum if mum didn't give me extra food" So presumably Mum gave her extra food. So the tantrums worked. That is not the way to parent. Not for nothing is it called 'spoiling the child'.
I can imagine how awful school PE must have been for her. I hated it. Well, actually, I liked hockey, badminton and tennis, but all the rest, netball and bloody volleyball, both designed to give a crick in the neck. And athletics, gym and rounders. Hateful hateful stuff. But not as bad as the torture that was cross-country through John Leigh Park. I am simply not designed to be good at sport. Bad hand and eye co-ordination. A doctor once told me I have floppy joints. I don't think it's a serious medical condition.
But if I had had a serious health- or life-threatening weight problem, I am sure that somebody would have tried to find some exercise I liked and helped me to do it. Swimming, football, dancing, walking, cycling. Even hockey or tennis. Most of the time I just couldn't be bothered. Still can't, mainly.
But because I don't have my umbilical cord attached to a car and because of my nervous energy 'too much, calm down' it has been said, more than once, I get by. PE was so geared towards glory, being competitive, glory for the school, boosting self esteem for those that couldn't hack it academically, in music or drama, or in community works. Nothing actually about fitness, or how to exercise correctly. No connection with nutrition lessons - which in any case were only for the third or so who did Home Economics at O-Level. And I suspect that my school was far better than most at that time, and our PE teachers were splendid human beings, shame about the subject.
