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My brother used to be very overweight. He's around 6'1 and I think at one point he was in the 350lb range. About 10 years ago, he had some kind of wake-up call and lost a ton of weight, over 100lbs in one year. He got down to around 200lbs in the end and maintained that weight for a while.
He's been dating his girlfriend, T, for several years now and recently they decided they needed to go on diets. My bro's weight was creeping back up (he was about 240 a year ago) and his girlfriend wasn't obese but she was overweight. For a while they were going to the gym and eating normally. Now they've gone kind of extreme.
In the last 3 months, T has refused to cook. She used to cook a lot, almost too much one would argue, or at least too much high-calorie foods (roasts with cream gravies and mashed potatoes, lasagna loaded with cheese, bratwursts on the grill, and lots and lots of desserts...they could go through a German chocolate cake in about 3 days, and she'd make desserts 2-3 times a week.) Instead, they go to Subway...every...day...of the week. They go once a day, for dinner, and get the exact same thing every time. During the day, for breakfast and lunch, they eat powerbars, granola bars, protein shakes, and plain popcorn. T has lost over 40lbs since they started doing this 3 months ago. My bro is now down to about 175lbs.
Okay, fine. They're losing weight and they seem happy about the way they're doing it. But what concerns me is that they're making T's daughter, D, do the same thing.
D is 10. She'll be 11 in a couple of months. They have her on the same diet; power bars for breakfast and lunch, and a 6 inch sub for dinner. She's also very active in a lot of sports. My bro and T say that she needs to be active all the time or she will just sit around thinking about food and eating all the time.
The kicker is that D wasn't overweight to begin with. She may have been a little chunky; I don't know what she weighed, but she was not considered obese by any means. She has lost a lot of weight since they started the Subway diet and she is practically skin and bones now. When my parents had them over for dinner a few nights ago, D hardly ate anything because she was afraid T and my bro were going to read her the riot act for eating too much. They themselves, meanwhile, had massive portions of everything, to the point that T actually made herself sick, literally...a couple hours after dinner, she went into the bathroom and started vomiting.
I can't imagine this is healthy. They are probably eating around or under 1000 calories a day. This isn't healthy for a normal adult, let alone a growing child who is very active in sports (did I mention that they all take bike rides and long walks every day as well?) But you can't tell them anything. My mom has talked to my bro about how concerned she is about them and how they need to eat more, and that they should learn how to cook healthy foods. But my bro insists that this is the best way to do it, since Subway has all their nutritional values laid out and they can see exactly how many calories they're getting from their meals there. He says that T should never cook again and that everyone in America should be doing this and it would solve all of our obesity problems forever.
He's been dating his girlfriend, T, for several years now and recently they decided they needed to go on diets. My bro's weight was creeping back up (he was about 240 a year ago) and his girlfriend wasn't obese but she was overweight. For a while they were going to the gym and eating normally. Now they've gone kind of extreme.
In the last 3 months, T has refused to cook. She used to cook a lot, almost too much one would argue, or at least too much high-calorie foods (roasts with cream gravies and mashed potatoes, lasagna loaded with cheese, bratwursts on the grill, and lots and lots of desserts...they could go through a German chocolate cake in about 3 days, and she'd make desserts 2-3 times a week.) Instead, they go to Subway...every...day...of the week. They go once a day, for dinner, and get the exact same thing every time. During the day, for breakfast and lunch, they eat powerbars, granola bars, protein shakes, and plain popcorn. T has lost over 40lbs since they started doing this 3 months ago. My bro is now down to about 175lbs.
Okay, fine. They're losing weight and they seem happy about the way they're doing it. But what concerns me is that they're making T's daughter, D, do the same thing.
D is 10. She'll be 11 in a couple of months. They have her on the same diet; power bars for breakfast and lunch, and a 6 inch sub for dinner. She's also very active in a lot of sports. My bro and T say that she needs to be active all the time or she will just sit around thinking about food and eating all the time.
The kicker is that D wasn't overweight to begin with. She may have been a little chunky; I don't know what she weighed, but she was not considered obese by any means. She has lost a lot of weight since they started the Subway diet and she is practically skin and bones now. When my parents had them over for dinner a few nights ago, D hardly ate anything because she was afraid T and my bro were going to read her the riot act for eating too much. They themselves, meanwhile, had massive portions of everything, to the point that T actually made herself sick, literally...a couple hours after dinner, she went into the bathroom and started vomiting.
I can't imagine this is healthy. They are probably eating around or under 1000 calories a day. This isn't healthy for a normal adult, let alone a growing child who is very active in sports (did I mention that they all take bike rides and long walks every day as well?) But you can't tell them anything. My mom has talked to my bro about how concerned she is about them and how they need to eat more, and that they should learn how to cook healthy foods. But my bro insists that this is the best way to do it, since Subway has all their nutritional values laid out and they can see exactly how many calories they're getting from their meals there. He says that T should never cook again and that everyone in America should be doing this and it would solve all of our obesity problems forever.
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