AZ mother's goal to be fattest person ever

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Discussion Overview

The thread discusses the case of Susanne Eman, an obese woman aiming to become the fattest person ever by consuming an extreme diet of 20,000 calories a day. Participants explore various aspects of her goal, including health implications, societal reactions, and personal motivations, with a mix of admiration, concern, and criticism.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Exploratory
  • Meta-discussion

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants express admiration for Eman's commitment to her goal, viewing it as a testament to individual determination.
  • Others raise concerns about the health risks associated with her extreme diet and lifestyle, questioning the implications for her well-being.
  • There are discussions about the societal costs of her lifestyle, including the financial burden on taxpayers who support her through social services.
  • Some participants draw parallels between Eman's situation and fictional characters, suggesting a cultural commentary on obesity and disability.
  • Several comments highlight the potential psychological motivations behind her desire for extreme weight gain, including a fear of being ignored.
  • Participants debate the appropriateness of societal support for individuals who choose to engage in self-destructive behaviors, with some suggesting confinement for health reasons.
  • There are references to other cases of extreme obesity and comparisons to sumo wrestlers, with differing opinions on the health and fitness of such individuals.
  • Some participants mention online communities that may encourage such behaviors, suggesting a broader cultural phenomenon.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

The discussion features multiple competing views, with no clear consensus on the appropriateness of Eman's goal, the societal implications, or the health risks involved. Participants express a range of opinions from support to strong criticism.

Contextual Notes

Participants reference various societal and health-related assumptions, but these are not universally accepted. The discussion includes speculative statements about motivations and consequences without definitive conclusions.

  • #31
turbo said:
How many stones in a furlong? Just askin'


This is a hard question to answer when is a stone a stone and not a pebble, a local farmer did a study he used a pebble to mean a rounded object of 2 inches or less not to be a stone,
he divided an area by sq rods and found an average of 12 stones per sq rod.
 
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  • #32
The 52-stone bombshell aims to reach a whopping 115 stone, or 1,600lb, by guzzling at least 20,000 calories a day.

A new meaning to the word "bombshell."

i.e., not the "Thin Boy."
 
  • #33
If she surpasses the 1600# record, then what? Even if she starts losing weight, she's going to look like a mutant sharpei (with an entry in the Guiness World Book of Records). Guiness should stop publishing records regarding self-destructive behaviors, but then they do this to sell books, so sanity is not a real option.
 
  • #34
It's a tough one for Guiness, they record world records and at the end of the day there are plenty of people out there who are going to do stupid things. Either way she's going to try to be the fattest woman ever, even if Guiness didn't record that it would be recorded elsewhere. So Guiness have lost something, and not gained anything.
 
  • #35
turbo said:
If she surpasses the 1600# record, then what?

Try to get her own zip code?

ryan_m_b said:
It's a tough one for Guiness, they record world records and at the end of the day there are plenty of people out there who are going to do stupid things. Either way she's going to try to be the fattest woman ever, even if Guiness didn't record that it would be recorded elsewhere. So Guiness have lost something, and not gained anything.

If it's not Guiness, it'll be someone else. Never underestimate the tenacity of a fool.
 
  • #36
And what does she get for her reckless "tenacity"? A 10-minute spot on Dr. Phil? Dr. Phil's production crew would have to travel to her home in AZ, since there is no way that she could travel, except perhaps by flat-bed trailer. The woman is mentally ill, IMO and anybody who is providing medical care to her ought to be stripped of their licenses. Child protective services ought to be visiting frequently, at a minimum, and preparing some kind of exit-strategy for her boys for when she croaks.
 
  • #37
I don't think she's mentally ill at all, an idiot yes but I see no evidence of her having a condition.
 
  • #38
ryan_m_b said:
I don't think she's mentally ill at all, an idiot yes but I see no evidence of her having a condition.

Seriously? She's clearly lost her mind. She's willingly adopted a purely self-destructive path to the detriment of herself, her children, and the tax-paying public.

If her goal was to be the most externally self-mutilated individual, would you feel differently? Instead of deforming and destroying her body from the inside as a premeditated act, what if she did it from the outside?

It's fun to have a laugh at her, and enjoy the little shock of cognitive dissonance that this brings. We can make jokes about how "fat" American is, and draw parallels to trends. But, without a doubt, the woman is mentally ill. She is consciously taking action that will prematurely end her life at the expense of her family, specifically her children.
 
  • #39
Self-destruction is not a sign of mental illness, she also displays rational (albiet foolish) thinking by determining that she does not care for her health and wants to make the choice to do this. It's easy to call someone mentally ill from across the internet because they are doing something idiotic or dangerous but the reality is that these people are just bizzare, misguided or make the choice to do this with their lives. I'll repeat my statement that I see no evidence of mental illness, especially as no specific illnesses have been proposed here. Instead her bad choice (from our perspective because we value health and not sponging off of others) is being conflated with a medical condition.

NOTE: I'm not absolutely refuting that she isn't mentally ill or that she's got some psychological issues but until there is any evidence for that I'm not going to sit here and nod as someone's behaviour (freakish as it is) is written off as the product of a sick person.
 
  • #40
i'm telling you, there are dudes on the internet that get off on this and encourage people like her to get as big as possible. she's doing it for the same reason that women get breast implants.
 
  • #41
ryan_m_b said:
Self-destruction is not a sign of mental illness, she also displays rational (albiet foolish) thinking by determining that she does not care for her health and wants to make the choice to do this. It's easy to call someone mentally ill from across the internet because they are doing something idiotic or dangerous but the reality is that these people are just bizzare, misguided or make the choice to do this with their lives. I'll repeat my statement that I see no evidence of mental illness, especially as no specific illnesses have been proposed here. Instead her bad choice (from our perspective because we value health and not sponging off of others) is being conflated with a medical condition.

If she were doing precisely the opposite, would you feel the same way? Anorexia nervosa is a recognized mental illness. So is bulimia nervosa. Lesch–Nyhan syndrome has a strong correlation with self-mutilation. I believe it's also been connected to binge-eating. Granted, the connection here isn't perfect, but is it impossible to imagine something similar?

Proton Soup said:
i'm telling you, there are dudes on the internet that get off on this and encourage people like her to get as big as possible. she's doing it for the same reason that women get breast implants.

Significant difference; she isn't targeting some ideal form, she's trying to become as large as possible. Women who get breast implants don't continually get them until they are as large as possible. In fact, I don't think that behavior has EVER been seen.

If it were as simple as someone encouraging her or a sub-society applying the pressures of some non-canonical anatomical image of beauty, then there would be MANY women vying to be as fat as possible just as we see MANY women getting breast implants. This is so rare that it warrants a news story (well, maybe not "warrants" but it certainly "got" a news story).
 
  • #42
inb4heartattack
 
  • #43
FlexGunship said:
If Anorexia nervosa is a recognized mental illness. So is bulimia nervosa. Lesch–Nyhan syndrome has a strong correlation with self-mutilation. I believe it's also been connected to binge-eating. Granted, the connection here isn't perfect, but is it impossible to imagine something similar?
No, not impossible, but extremely difficult. She isn't suffering from the irresistable urge to eat, but rather has made a conscious decision to eat more than hunger would dictate.
 
  • #44
Jimmy Snyder said:
No, not impossible, but extremely difficult. She isn't suffering from the irresistable urge to eat, but rather has made a conscious decision to eat more than hunger would dictate.

Have you ever seen someone do something by accident and then play it off as though it was done on purpose to protect their ego? Maybe there was a time in her life where she was trying to control her weight but couldn't do it, and rather than accept failure (or place more strict limitations on her diet), she declared she wanted to be fat.

There's something more at work here than the desire to commit suicide by taco.
 
  • #45
FlexGunship said:
Have you ever seen someone do something by accident and then play it off as though it was done on purpose to protect their ego? Maybe there was a time in her life where she was trying to control her weight but couldn't do it, and rather than accept failure (or place more strict limitations on her diet), she declared she wanted to be fat.

There's something more at work here than the desire to commit suicide by taco.

I don't see how you can make that judgement with the evidence at hand. I see plenty of people on TV all the time doing things that I think are ridiculous. It doesn't surprise me that out of all the people on the planet there's one who wants to eat her way to being the biggest woman.
 
  • #46
FlexGunship said:
Significant difference; she isn't targeting some ideal form, she's trying to become as large as possible. Women who get breast implants don't continually get them until they are as large as possible. In fact, I don't think that behavior has EVER been seen.
It happens a lot, women keep getting bigger and bigger implants, some have died from repeated operations.

Here is one that survived.

She may feel like a boob now, but Sheyla Hershey, the Texas mom with the world's largest breasts, wasn't laughing when doctors told her that her 38KKK implants were killing her.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20016194-10391704.html
 
  • #47
FlexGunship said:
Have you ever seen someone do something by accident and then play it off as though it was done on purpose to protect their ego?
Do you think that this is a possibility, or a probability?
 
  • #48
ryan_m_b said:
I don't see how you can make that judgement with the evidence at hand. I see plenty of people on TV all the time doing things that I think are ridiculous. It doesn't surprise me that out of all the people on the planet there's one who wants to eat her way to being the biggest woman.

Fair enough, I guess. It just seems so much worse. It's a guaranteed death sentence and she has kids. On the multi-dimensional array of human behaviors, whenever you get to a far extreme, where a certain variable is maximized, we usually find the mentally ill.

There is a difference between sky-diving for an adrenaline rush, and provoking wild tiger attacks for an adrenaline rush.

Evo said:
It happens a lot, women keep getting bigger and bigger implants, some have died from repeated operations.

Here is one that survived.

Interesting. I guess I didn't realize that.

Jimmy Snyder said:
Do you think that this is a possibility, or a probability?

Certainly not a probability. I'm making circumstantial arguments to explain a ridiculously extreme behavior. I stand by the idea that there's something more at work here than striving for a place in the record books. If she's doing it to mirror some unorthodox image of beauty, and the process is marked by her inability to assess her own health then it's an analogue of anorexia.
 
  • #49
FlexGunship said:
Fair enough, I guess. It just seems so much worse. It's a guaranteed death sentence and she has kids. On the multi-dimensional array of human behaviors, whenever you get to a far extreme, where a certain variable is maximized, we usually find the mentally ill.

There is a difference between sky-diving for an adrenaline rush, and provoking wild tiger attacks for an adrenaline rush.

I was thinking more along the lines of smoking 20 a day, drinking a bottle of vodka a night, refusing medical treatment etc. Many people are misguided and/or stupid without being mentally ill. In fact it's depressingly common.
 
  • #50
ryan_m_b said:
I was thinking more along the lines of smoking 20 a day, drinking a bottle of vodka a night, refusing medical treatment etc. Many people are misguided and/or stupid without being mentally ill. In fact it's depressingly common.

Well, addiction (the driving force your two examples above) generally walks hand-in-hand with mental illness.

Mental illnesses can increase the risk for alcoholism or drug abuse

Addiction of all types -- to nicotine, alcohol and drugs -- is often found in people with a wide variety of mental illnesses, including anxiety disorders, unipolar and bipolar depression, schizophrenia, and borderline and other personality disorders.

I don't think it's impossible that she suffers from a legitimate mental illness and covers it up with false pride in her condition. Charlie Sheen comes to mind.
 
  • #51
Evo said:
It happens a lot, women keep getting bigger and bigger implants, some have died from repeated operations.

Here is one that survived.



http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20016194-10391704.html

staph infections
 
  • #52
Evo said:
Here is one that survived.

CBS News said:
I was in bed all day, couldn't get up," Hershey said in July.
I'm not surprised. Her hobby is trying to walk without falling over.
 
  • #53
FlexGunship said:
Addiction of all types -- to nicotine, alcohol and drugs -- is often found in people with a wide variety of mental illnesses, including anxiety disorders, unipolar and bipolar depression, schizophrenia, and borderline and other personality disorders.

This only tells us that if you have a mental illness, then it is likely that it can be manifested as an addiction. However, this does not tell us that if you have addictive behaviour, that it is a manifestation of mental illness.

The same goes for your other quote. There is a big difference.
 
  • #54
Perhaps this gives some insight into her rationale...

Susanne's bizarre mission began after she couldn't stop gaining weight naturally.
'Two years ago I hit 35 stone because I was losing my battle against weight gain,’ she said.
‘I noticed I actually started attracting more men, and it made me feel good.’

From Evo's original article.
 
  • #55
Generally speaking the term "mental illness" starts to be relevant when a person's behavior, whatever it is, makes them dysfunctional. Most would agree keeping a tidy place is a good thing, for example, but when the need to line up your soup cans according to height starts making you late for work, then you probably have Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder and are on the verge of becoming dysfunctional.

Though it's hard to plug this woman into a pre-existing diagnosis with the info we have, there's no doubt she's dysfunctional.
 
  • #56
zoobyshoe said:
Though it's hard to plug this woman into a pre-existing diagnosis with the info we have, there's no doubt she's dysfunctional.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders loosely defines an eating disorder as:
[...] a group of conditions defined by abnormal eating habits that may involve either insufficient or excessive food intake to the detriment of an individual's physical and mental health.

It doesn't say whether it has to be involuntary or not.
 
  • #57
FlexGunship said:
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders loosely defines an eating disorder as:


It doesn't say whether it has to be involuntary or not.
C'mon. Obviously if a person can shut it off it's not a disorder.

But, I'm not sure this woman has an eating disorder, per se.

There's a chance she has Munchausen Syndrome, where people fake illness for attention. This half fits, because I think this woman is all about the attention, but since her obesity is so admittedly deliberate, Munchhausen's doesn't really fit. We'd expect someone with Munchhausen's to claim it was beyond their control.

She might, alternately, have Histrionic Personality Disorder, which is all about the need to be the center of attention.

Symptoms of Histrionic Personality Disorder

A pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

Is uncomfortable in situations in which he or she is not the center of attention

Interaction with others is often characterized by inappropriate sexually seductive or provocative behavior

Displays rapidly shifting and shallow expression of emotions

Consistently uses physical appearance to draw attention to themself

Has a style of speech that is excessively impressionistic and lacking in detail

Shows self-dramatization, theatricality, and exaggerated expression of emotion

Is highly suggestible, i.e., easily influenced by others or circumstances

Considers relationships to be more intimate than they actually are
http://psychcentral.com/disorders/sx17.htm


The one: "Consistently uses physical appearance to draw attention to themself", could well explain what this woman is about, half using her fat to get everyone's attention and half catering to guys with that specific fetish. As for the rest of the list, there's not enough info to say.

The one guy I know who admitted to having been diagnosed with HPD did not display any "seductive behavior" I'm aware of, but he did go around in an eccentric clothing combo of his own design, which I'm sure was meant to attract attention. This included a clip on necktie that was made of wood. He wore that every day for years.
 
  • #58
zoobyshoe said:
Generally speaking the term "mental illness" starts to be relevant when a person's behavior, whatever it is, makes them dysfunctional. Most would agree keeping a tidy place is a good thing, for example, but when the need to line up your soup cans according to height starts making you late for work, then you probably have Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder and are on the verge of becoming dysfunctional.

Though it's hard to plug this woman into a pre-existing diagnosis with the info we have, there's no doubt she's dysfunctional.

But then we get into the sticky situation of defining "dysfunctional" and it's a bit of a leap to imagine that if an adult rationally decides to do something that they know will damage their health they are dysfunctional. The majority of adults tend to do that at some point (and a hefty number of the minority do it excessively: smoking, drinking, over-eating etc)
 
  • #59
ryan_m_b said:
But then we get into the sticky situation of defining "dysfunctional"...
There's certainly a continuum, and you might have a hard time deciding in some cases when someone has crossed the line, but this woman does not strike me as borderline.
...and it's a bit of a leap to imagine that if an adult rationally decides to do something that they know will damage their health they are dysfunctional. The majority of adults tend to do that at some point (and a hefty number of the minority do it excessively: smoking, drinking, over-eating etc)
I don't have a DSM with me but IIRC it's explained what they consider dysfunctional. The term comes into play in separating the merely eccentric and idiosyncratic from those whose behaviors severely disrupt their own lives and/or the lives of those around them.

It pretty much goes without saying that self destructive over-indulgence is never embarked upon "rationally". You could say, in this woman's case anyway, it was a conscious decision, but I don't think you could accurately assert it was rational.
 
  • #60
Evo said:
And it has made her feel sexier.

Goodness, yes! She undoubtedly has fans from every major fast-food restaurant around the world.

KingNothing said:
I hope this doesn't start to pose a health concern.

"Start?" I'm more concerned about her mental health than her physical health. This is just slow suicide, and that's not healthy.