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2015-04-27 4:46 PM


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Subject: Experience with an obesity intervention...
I am curious whether anyone here has experience with a "family intervention" for obesity (either as the intervener or the intervenee....).

I ask because I have a brother who I love dearly but is very obese. He is 29 years old and about 100lbs overweight. He recently went to the doctor and had a blood pressure of 190/100, so they put him on blood pressure medication and got him to cut a lot of the sodium from his diet. But he isn't really doing anything about his weight. He has pretty bad back pain and sort of hops from doctor to doctor looking for he magic diagnosis or cure, but they all more or less tell him that he needs to get his diet under control and become more active or else the pain isn't going to get better. However, he is afraid to become more active because he is scared of making his back pain worse. So he always finds an excuse or a way of talking himself out of it. He still lives with my parents and while he does have a part-time job, he is afraid to change jobs or go back to school because, again, he is afraid that pretty much any change might mess up his back even worse.

I am really, really worried about where this is leading. His problem is going to become increasingly painful, expensive, and a burden on the rest of the family if something doesn't change pretty soon - the window of opportunity for him to change is closing. My sister and I, who are both very responsible, independent, healthy, and successful, have tried to talk to my parents about the situation but we just keep getting a dismissive "oh he'll be fine, stop worrying!" It is starting to affect my relationship with my parents - whenever I visit them now I feel angry about what they are letting my brother to do himself and their seemingly cavalier attitude about fixing it. I love them, and my brother, very dearly, but my sister and I both feel incredibly distressed about the situation and fear it's only going to get worse and worse. It makes both of us dread visiting because the situation is just right there in our faces every time we're at the house (she lives in a nearby town, I live ~4.5 hours away and visit every month or two).

We've discussed trying to set up an "intervention" but want to make sure we do it right. Aside from the obvious need to get him moving and eating properly, two things we have to be careful about are: 1) making sure my brother understands that we want him to change because we love him, and 2) getting my parents on board without sounding like we're calling them bad parents.

Does anyone here have an experience with something like this? Any protips would be greatly appreciated



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General Discussion Triathlon Talk » Experience with an obesity intervention... Rss Feed  
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