How ‘Half Your Teenage Son’ Billy Robbins Saved Himself With Weight-Loss Surgery
You may have heard or read about ‘Billy Robbins’, the teenager who has sadly been dubbed ‘half your teenager’ by the media, who at just 19 years of age topped the scale at an incredible 800 pounds, which made him the heaviest teenager in the world.
His plight has been well documented in a TLC special called, imaginably, “the middle of his teens.” Billy had been told that he literally had months to live if his weight didn’t drop drastically and that the only option for such drastic weight loss was to have weight loss surgery.
The most effective and commonly used surgical procedure for clinically obese people is called gastric banding, which is when a laparoscopic adjustable gastric band is placed around the upper part of the stomach, this procedure is usually non-invasive and can be performed by laparoscopic surgery or keyhole. surgery as it is more commonly known.
In the case of Billy Robbins, he was initially too large to have life-saving surgery and had to go on a strict 1,200-calorie diet, which may not seem too extreme for people of normal size and weight, but when you’ve been consuming 8,000 calories a day is a massive reduction.
Eventually, after losing two and a half stones, he had the first of a three-step surgical plan, designed by surgeons in Texas who specialized in this type of procedure. This operation involved removing a large amount of excess fat from Billy’s stomach, a five stone slab to be exact, that’s 70 pounds!
Then, after 3 months of hospital care and continued dieting, during which time his weight had dropped a remarkable 280 pounds, he underwent the second phase of his surgery.
This second phase was to implant the gastric band that would limit the amount of food he could eat, a month after this he was allowed to go home having lost 70 more pounds.
The third and final part of this surgery will be to tighten the gastric band to further limit Billy’s food intake and help him lose even more weight. When this documentary aired in January 2009, Billy had lost a total of 30 stone, just over half of his initial original weight.
Weight loss surgery has saved Billy Robbins from certain early death, as it has done many, many others, but the real issue here is the diet and eating habits of a nation, sure Billy Robbins was some kind of a victim of circumstance, being pampered by a mother who gave him no instructions regarding the correct diet and, for whatever reasons he may have had, was slowly killing the son he loves.
Kids need diet and exercise education from an early age or they too will fall victim to lazy eating culture and we will see more cases like Billy’s. Advertisers need to be governed much better as our children are under a constant barrage of ad after ad for fat and sugar filled snacks and drinks that have our children’s health as their lowest rather than highest priority.
Many of these corporations that prey on our youth have the audacity to blame the victims for a lack of self-control, but the message they subliminally promote is that more is good! We have to take action and put control firmly in our own hands to ensure that our children and ourselves live happier, healthier and longer lives.
At last count, more than two-thirds of Americans were overweight and about 15% of them obese, with the numbers expected to reach 75% by 2015! This problem has forced our health insurance costs to rise beyond the reach of many, since weight-related illnesses are the main source of spending on our medical resources.
It is never too late to act, losing weight and leading a healthier lifestyle through diet and exercise will not only help us, but our children as well.