Daily 10,000 Calories from Delivery and Junk Food... Binge Eating List of Super Obese Patients

Movie 'The Whale' Protagonist Binge Eats Pizza After Specific Incident
UK's Heaviest Men Die One After Another
Binge Eating After Father or Mother’s Death
Mainly Eats Junk Food Three Meals a Day
Vowed to Lose Weight but Failed

The protagonist Charlie (Brandon Fraser) in the movie The Whale is a college professor who teaches essay writing courses online. He was married with a wife and daughter but abandoned his family after meeting a male student. When that student took his own life, Charlie fell into a deep sense of loss and repeatedly engaged in binge eating. Eventually, he became morbidly obese at 272 kg and could not stop binge eating. He ordered pizza every day but did not receive it directly; instead, he paid for it and quietly took it from outside the front door. A chance incident led him to binge eat even more. Pizza was a staple on his binge-eating list.

Jason Holton, known as the "heaviest man in the UK."
[Photo by The Sun]

The causes of binge eating among people suffering from morbid obesity are diverse, both internal and external. However, the common factor is that a traumatic and shocking event that leads to trauma acts as a trigger for binge eating. Jason Holton (33), a British man who died earlier this month, was no exception. He weighed 318 kg. Life was difficult for him while alive, and even after death, handling his body and funeral was a heavy burden. Jason began gaining weight after he started overeating to cope with the grief of his father's death during his teenage years. For five years, he stayed confined at home, eating only fast food delivery such as kebabs, meat, chocolate, potato chips, sandwiches, orange juice, and soda. Jason tried to reduce his food intake and lost 3 kg while in a private care facility. However, after suffering multiple heart attacks and losing the ability to walk, he lived only in his home bed until his death.

Carl Thompson, who weighed 412.7 kg, died in 2015 at the age of 33. He was the heaviest person in the UK before passing the baton to Jason. British media outlets such as the Daily Star and Mirror highlighted Carl’s eating habits. He also suffered from obesity, but the trigger was the death of his mother from a brain tumor in 2012. To soothe his grief, he ate junk food. He never fully recovered from the loss of his mother, and his weight more than doubled before his sudden death. The root of the problem lay in his childhood habit of raiding the refrigerator at night. As an adult, his breakfast consisted of four sausages, five fried eggs, fried bread, mushrooms, and a bowl of cereal. For lunch, he ate pasta, potato chips, bacon, pork pies, chips, pastries, sandwiches, and chocolate. Dinner was usually Chinese or Indian takeout.

Hamburgers and French fries are the perfect combination for taste but the worst combination for the body. The photo is an image unrelated to the content of the article.
Photo by Pixabay

During the last six years of his life, he spent a staggering ?22,000 (approximately 37.5 million KRW) on takeout. Lying in bed in his apartment in Dover, Kent, UK, he consumed 10,000 calories a day. He paid ?200 (about 340,000 KRW) weekly for takeout and delivery apps, giving fast food restaurants his house keys so food could be delivered directly to his bed. Just weeks before his death, he appeared on Channel 5’s Super Size documentary and promised to change his life and live a normal life. He told the production team:

"I want to move around my apartment, get to my bed, go to the bathroom, and get there first. That is my first goal. My second goal is to move around this apartment without any problems. Eventually, as I get stronger, I will be able to do that. Then I will have no problems. Instead of using a Zimmer frame (mobility aid) and crutches for small tasks, once I get off the Zimmer frame and gain more confidence with crutches, I will be able to do everything that I couldn’t do because of my weight."

Photo for article understanding purposes only, unrelated to the article content [Photo source=Pixabay]

During filming, he said he wanted to lose weight to play in the park with his one-year-old nephew. He was determined to see his beloved nephew grow up, get married, and have children. Unfortunately, Carl did not achieve this. In June 2015, shortly after ordering crumble (a dessert made with fruit topped with flour and butter) and ice cream, he was found dead at home. A month before his death, in another interview, he expressed fear of getting a gastric band and pleaded for help with weight loss, saying "I am missing out on everything in life because of what I eat." Doctors warned him that he needed to lose 70% of his body weight to avoid premature death. However, despite his aspirations, his commitment to weight loss came too late.