Heart Attack Grill Ad Man Dies of Flu (and Maybe Some of That 575 Pound Frame)

[UnSub]

Spokesman for the Heart Attack Grill, which serves very high-calorie food, dies aged 29. Media reports are that his death came from complications arising from flu / pneumonia, but it probably didn't help that the man weighted 575 pounds. A healthier weight on him and his chances of surviving would have been much higher.

This doesn't actually count as irony since he didn't die of a heart attack.

[Lantyssa]

Close enough, since health conditions are more interrelated than people like to give credit.  Dead at 29 is still dead at far too young an age.

[Merusk]

Yeah it wasn't a heart-attack but it was most assuredly weight related.  It's not easy to breathe at that heavy, which is what probably lead to the pneumonia.

Fuck it though, I'm tired of caring about people unwilling to care for themselves.

[Tebonas]

If that was a photo in the prime of his life, he looks sick even then.

[Nebu]

Working in pediatrics, I saw a handful of very fit teen athletes die of heart failure each year.  While weight may have been a contributing factor, it could have just been exacerbated by a preexisting genetic condition (enlarged heart, etc.).  Hard to know without all of the facts.

[Merusk]

(Pssst.. Nebu, it wasn't heart failure..)

[Nebu]

(Pssst.. Nebu, it wasn't heart failure..)

He died from one of two things as a complication of pneumonia: heart failure or anoxia.  It's likely the later, but stress due to fluid can cause the former. 

[Merusk]

Ah, I did not know that as my grandparents who died of pneumonia were both the latter.  I figured you just gave it a quick pass. My apologies.

[Sheepherder]

While weight may have been a contributing factor, it could have just been exacerbated by a preexisting genetic condition (enlarged heart, etc.)

Probably not Marfans syndrome though.

[Paelos]

I'm 29 now. I honestly can't imagine being that big. Hell I could imagine 250 if I really really let things go to hell, but 500 plus? There's no way the people in my life that gave a damn would allow that.

[NowhereMan]

As Basso told Bill Geist on CBS' "Sunday Morning" in 2008, "Our motto is simple: Taste worth dying for."

I'm somewhat torn on the restaurant. I can appreciate the general thing of being up front about indulging but the food just looks like it would make me feel ill.

[Lakov_Sanite]

At my heaviest in life I was 220 and I was literally doing things like eating a whole 1lb package of bacon for breakfast and dipping it in maple syrup(yes it was delicious, yes it was a very bad idea) so that's me just not giving a fuck. How you can surpass 3-400 pounds is beyond me. You have to conciously be trying to gain weight I feel like.

[Paelos]

At my heaviest in life I was 220 and I was literally doing things like eating a whole 1lb package of bacon for breakfast and dipping it in maple syrup(yes it was delicious, yes it was a very bad idea) so that's me just not giving a fuck. How you can surpass 3-400 pounds is beyond me. You have to conciously be trying to gain weight I feel like.

The people on the biggest Loser would detail what they ate. One dude said he would order 12 things from Taco Bell for lunch, and chug and entire 2 liter of regular soda. That's just one meal.

[Chimpy]

At my heaviest in life I was 220 and I was literally doing things like eating a whole 1lb package of bacon for breakfast and dipping it in maple syrup(yes it was delicious, yes it was a very bad idea) so that's me just not giving a fuck. How you can surpass 3-400 pounds is beyond me. You have to conciously be trying to gain weight I feel like.

Different body types put on weight differently.

Metabolism has a lot to do with it as well.

I was over 200 pounds when I was in good shape in high school.

[Ingmar]

At my heaviest in life I was 220 and I was literally doing things like eating a whole 1lb package of bacon for breakfast and dipping it in maple syrup(yes it was delicious, yes it was a very bad idea) so that's me just not giving a fuck. How you can surpass 3-400 pounds is beyond me. You have to conciously be trying to gain weight I feel like.

Different body types put on weight differently.

Metabolism has a lot to do with it as well.

I was over 200 pounds when I was in good shape in high school.

Yeah, people are really variable in that way. I'm over 6' tall, but when I was 200 lbs I started getting some things that are usually related to obesity, like fat deposits in my liver, borderline sleep apnea, etc. My 'ideal' weight is probably more like 160.

[Paelos]

I get 300 pounds. That's like a lineman in the NFL. You're big and people know you're big, and it's not healthy. Still, you're walking around, probably have knee problems and you generally got there over a long period of time.

29 and 500+??? This guy was a heavyweight champion wrestler in 1999. Let's just assume that at that age, he was the absolute max for that class, which is 285 pounds.

575 pounds when he died in 2011, 12 years later. That means he gained 290 pounds in that time, doubling his weight.

To keep that up, he would have had to gain 24 pounds a year, every year until his eventual death. That's wildly insane.

[Trippy]

I get 300 pounds. That's like a lineman in the NFL. You're big and people know you're big, and it's not healthy. Still, you're walking around, probably have knee problems and you generally got there over a long period of time.

29 and 500+??? This guy was a heavyweight champion wrestler in 1999. Let's just assume that at that age, he was the absolute max for that class, which is 285 pounds.

575 pounds when he died in 2011, 12 years later. That means he gained 290 pounds in that time, doubling his weight.

To keep that up, he would have had to gain 24 pounds a year, every year until his eventual death. That's wildly insane.

Not really. Assuming a linear with a slope of 1 conversion of extra calories to pounds that's ~1627 extra calories a week or ~3 extra Big Macs a week or ~12 extra cans of Coke a week.

[Paelos]

Yes but extra on top of what? How much are you burning per step up the stairway to fat?

[K9]

I am with Paelos in the sense that I cannot personally picture the intermediate steps between the large-but-otherwise-normal person and the morbidly obese. I have a couple of friends who push the 300 pound mark; they are both fat in the broad sense, but mainly because they have incredibly stocky builds. The challenge is to see those guys going from where they are, to being twice the weight. I have difficulty wrapping my head around how you step up consumption to the levels that some of these morbidly obese people manage.

I guess it is just 'seconds' every meal all the time and that starts to add up.

[Murgos]

Not really. Assuming a linear with a slope of 1 conversion of extra calories to pounds that's ~1627 extra calories a week or ~3 extra Big Macs a week or ~12 extra cans of Coke a week.

It's not quite that straight forward, body mass itself requires energy to maintain.  The heavier you are the more calories you need to consume simply to stay still.

According to this: http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/

He needed 4000+ calories a day just not lose weight.

[NowhereMan]

That would be one of those double bypass burgers. If he was eating in that restaurant frequently enough to be their marketing spokesman it would not be that hard to eat that many calories. I mean it's not that easy but I can imagine someone getting used to having one of those massive things as a meal and that's pretty much all the extra calories right there if it's on top of breakfast and lunch.

One of the SA threads at the moment has a guy who was over 500lbs and has spent the last 11 months or so trying to fix himself. He's looking at possibly making it 170lbs lost in a year (at least 160) and it's kind of cool to watch someone lose whole people in weight. Also super fat people that lose weight by weight lifting and eating right are scary strong.

[Ingmar]

I have a friend who just hit 100 pounds lost in quite a short amount of time (4 or 5 months, something like that) but he needed a sleeve gastrectomy to do it. That always seems so extreme to me, but it has really worked out for him so far.

[Murgos]

I know someone who had a ring? Whatever gastric surgery that is.  For a year or so it really worked great, he lost a lot of weight.  But, the underlying issues were never dealt with and the last time I saw him he was as chubby as ever.

[WindupAtheist]

I know a girl who was, at one point, 4'11" and 400 pounds. She ended up a personal trainer somewhere in the low 100 pound range. No surgery or anything, just an inhumanly strong will.

[Ratman_tf]

I guess it is just 'seconds' every meal all the time and that starts to add up.

You ever have a messy garage? it starts with leaving the tools out, an extra box of stuff here and there, can't get to the ladder in the corner because of the boxes, oh well.
Then, one day, you can't get your car in the garage, and can't figure out how the fuck your garage got so full of shit.

[Sand]

Fuck it though, I'm tired of caring about people unwilling to care for themselves.

+1

[Paelos]

Fuck it though, I'm tired of caring about people unwilling to care for themselves.

+1

We don't do that here.

[Samwise]

 

[Der Helm]

+1


(Sorry, I know I am a bad person but I could not resist)


fakeedit:

PS: Did we not have basically the same thread derailment a few days ago ?   

[Sand]

PS: Did we not have basically the same thread derailment a few days ago ?   

Yeah but its okay because I deserved that and laughed.

 

[devildog]

I've seen a close friend go from 6'2", 225 (college heavyweight wrestler) to 500ish and back again, so i can see exactly how it happens. This guy was eating like a horse and working out at a frantic pace at age 20, benching 400 pounds, able to run 3 miles in 20 or so minutes,etc.  By age 25 he was eating at the same pace, but his activity level was maybe 10% of what it used to be. He quit lifting weights, was getting no cardio, etc. He got up to about 300 by 25. At 25-28 years he could have turned it around without a huge undertaking or adjustment. Unfortunately he continued with this path  into his 30s, where his metabolism slowed to a crawl, he picked up onset diabetes, and gained all the neat little health problems that go along with being 500 pounds. He finally broke down and went to the doctor for his diabetes, but continued eating fried okra, fried chicken, and anything else you could fry. He thought medicine could band-aid the problem.

 Eventually after being told he was well on his way to death in a year or two he decided to try and pull out of the tailspin. He re-opened the playbook to the page on pulling weight like a 18 year old wrestler and managed to drop 150 pounds in 5 months. He continued until he was down to 200 pounds. Now that sounds well and good, but he still has diabetes, looks like a prisoner of war in his color, and is generally unhealthy looking without an ounce of muscle to his name from what i can tell.

The lesson here i think is do a little bit while you can to maintain some amount of activity and eat in moderation or down the road you may have too much of a price to pay in effort and lifestyle change. I am definitely not the vegan guy nor am i saying people shouldn't eat fried foods. I think people should eat whatever they hell they want, but i also think you should maybe do a little working out to allow for the eating. I can definitely see how it can spin out of control. At 500 pounds you really can't do much of anything. Running, nope, hammers your knees. Metabolism has slowed to nothing at the point, so dietary changes alone won't touch it. Cardio of any sort isn't much of a possibilty since getting the mail gets you out of breath. I can't even imagine how hard that would be to bring back into line.

[Morat20]

Cut out regular sodas. If you're that big, and it's not some weird-ass genetic or hormonal condition (hey, they do exist), you're probably swilling Coke or Pepsi down.

Artificial sweeteners may cause problems, but so does 2000 calories a day in corn syrup just in your soft drinks.

[MahrinSkel]

My problem is that my body seems to want to weigh 280.  When I was much younger, that was all muscle, but after I quit putting in 20+ hours at the weights and martial arts every week it converted to fat.  A few years ago I gave up sugared soda and nearly all the rest of my sugar intake, and dropped to 230 in 6 months, but it slowly crept back on over the next few years and I wound up back in the 275-285 range, where I seem to be stuck.

--Dave

[Ingmar]

Cut out regular sodas. If you're that big, and it's not some weird-ass genetic or hormonal condition (hey, they do exist), you're probably swilling Coke or Pepsi down.

Artificial sweeteners may cause problems, but so does 2000 calories a day in corn syrup just in your soft drinks.

Even if you're not that big it can help, that was the main way I dropped 30 pounds last year (which is now back to only 20 pounds, oh well.)

[Lantyssa]

I dropped 8 pounds in a month giving up soda again.  Not gaining it back depends upon not making up for those calories in other ways though.