Need help with young boy who has an excessive eating disease(Reps)

[sloppyjoe1]

I believe this disease is called Prader Willi Syndrome. Anyways, here's the story: My girlfriend babysits these two boys, one of them has this disease and is 13 years old. He's been gaining a lot of weight because he literally doesn't stop eating, he never feels full. He also has very low self-esteem and motivation so I have an opportunity to get paid to help this kid lose weight and motivate him. I have a lot of knowledge and experience with diet and fitness but I wanted to hear how some of you guys would go about this? For example, things like fun workouts that will get him engaged and wont just seem like bootcamp.(he is really out of shape, my girlfriend tells me he can't even do a pushup) Also the diet part, i've written many diets for people and i've never come upon someone with a condition where they can't stop eating because they never get full! How would you go about this? Reps to as many of you as I can that provide me with some good insight.

[Cdt_Richards]

I believe this disease is called Prader Willi Syndrome. Anyways, here's the story: My girlfriend babysits these two boys, one of them has this disease and is 13 years old. He's been gaining a lot of weight because he literally doesn't stop eating, he never feels full. He also has very low self-esteem and motivation so I have an opportunity to get paid to help this kid lose weight and motivate him. I have a lot of knowledge and experience with diet and fitness but I wanted to hear how some of you guys would go about this? For example, things like fun workouts that will get him engaged and wont just seem like bootcamp.(he is really out of shape, my girlfriend tells me he can't even do a pushup) Also the diet part, i've written many diets for people and i've never come upon someone with a condition where they can't stop eating because they never get full! How would you go about this? Reps to as many of you as I can that provide me with some good insight.

Where he has an actual diagnosed disease, that is a tricky one. Honestly, I think diet-wise the best way to go about it would be the same as anyone in terms of satiety, higher protein and fiber, lower in refined grains and sugars to stabilize his blood sugar and prevent cravings the best you can. Workouts for 13 year olds should never be boot camps as it is, let alone to someone who can't even do a pushup. Definitely start EXTREMELY slow and light with him, playign games and having fun. Set very small, achieveable goals. Where he has self esteem issues, if you push him too hard and he fails even just once, you fail losing him entirely and giving up. Play fun games, and make the objective of the activity something that he can easily do. The more times he succeeds, the more confidence he will build, the more you can advance him, the more better his results will come. Plus, if he feels better about himself, he may be able to go out and be more confident, not sit around the house bored and eating all day, which will in term also help that problem. So really, start very, VERY slow and easy, allow him to succeed, even if physically it doesn't make a difference at first, and then progress from there. I hope this helps!

[sloppyjoe1]

Where he has an actual diagnosed disease, that is a tricky one. Honestly, I think diet-wise the best way to go about it would be the same as anyone in terms of satiety, higher protein and fiber, lower in refined grains and sugars to stabilize his blood sugar and prevent cravings the best you can. Workouts for 13 year olds should never be boot camps as it is, let alone to someone who can't even do a pushup. Definitely start EXTREMELY slow and light with him, playign games and having fun. Set very small, achieveable goals. Where he has self esteem issues, if you push him too hard and he fails even just once, you fail losing him entirely and giving up. Play fun games, and make the objective of the activity something that he can easily do. The more times he succeeds, the more confidence he will build, the more you can advance him, the more better his results will come. Plus, if he feels better about himself, he may be able to go out and be more confident, not sit around the house bored and eating all day, which will in term also help that problem. So really, start very, VERY slow and easy, allow him to succeed, even if physically it doesn't make a difference at first, and then progress from there. I hope this helps!

HUGE help, thank you. I also was thinking about high protein and fiber, that has the best chance of making him satiated. I also agree with starting really slow, as far as activities go what would you have in mind? Starting out with throwing the football around and shooting hoops sounds good because that's what he's interested in and it would be a good opportunity to get to know each other/feel comfortable because he's really insecure from what I hear, but once I decide to kick it up a little bit what kind of creative activities could I do to increase his heart rate? I'm going to be doing all these activities with him of course, I think that would really help motivate him to push himself.

[WoofieNugget]

Is the kid not under some kind of medical supervision? His diet if he has that condition should not be something that you should be supervising. The exercise side, maybe but he should be under the care of a dietician.

[cdurflinger]

Woffie is right, he needs a dietitian with that kind of disease. If the dietitian says a normal diet is okay for him then he probably needs to increase the protein and fiber intake. I would suggest oatmeal as his main carb. Tastes great and fills me up the best. Training should be more sports oriented to make them fun. Try playing rounds of basketball or football with him until his cardio-respiratory levels raise. Then you can look into specific training that burns more calories constantly. Maybe start with some stabilization endurance exercises. They are less demanding but since more muscles are recruited they do burn more calories. With him being out of shape some stabilization training couldn't hurt anyways.

Just be careful with getting him on a diet. If he does have this disease and it is diagnosed you could get in some serious trouble if anything bad happens to him.

Good luck

[popupwindow]

I think this one might be above your pay grade, don't be tempted to play doctor.