Daily Mail, Wednesday, March 4, 2020^ Page 3115-year-old harry:
18 stone
children in their care. Faced with
Tommy’s spiralling weight, they
decide to admit him as an inpatient
for ten days, meaning his diet will
be controlled round the clock by
hospital staff.
The hope is that a strict timetable
can be put in place which can be
replicated at home — except it
doesn’t quite work out like that:
while Tommy initially loses a stone,
h e t h e n , t o t h e h o s p i t a l ’ s
astonishment, puts it back on.
The culprit is none other than
Esther, whom staff discover is
smuggling in extra food, insisting
h e r s o n’ s d i e t w a s n e i t h e r
sufficiently varied or enough tosustain him. Today, she remains
unrepentant about her actions.
‘As a typical day’s menu, he had a
slice of toast for breakfast, a jacket
potato with cheese and beans for
lunch and the same for dinner with
two pieces of fruit,’ she says.
‘It was going from one extreme to
another and it’s not sustainable in
the real world.’
It proves another revealing
insight into the complex maze that
the clinic’s staff have to navigate,
from the complicated associations
parents place between food and
love to the emotional problems
behind some children’s compulsive
need to eat. In Harry’s case, welearn that his father’s sporadic
presence in his life — here one
minute, gone the next — has left
him seeking solace in food.
Asked if his weight is connected
to his relationship with his dad, he
replies: ‘I don’t want to be that
person that finds every excuse but
I think it is.’
For paediatric obesity nurse
specialist Melanie Wren, Harry’s
feelings are not atypical.
‘When you really talk to the chil-
dren it’s not about hunger, it’s an
intrinsic need — they almost get a
f e e l i n g o f l o v e w h e n t h e y ’ r e
eating,’ she says. ‘What you need
to do is deal with the emotionalAt 15, Harry
weighed
18 STONE
— so big he
needed a hip
replacement.
So why ArE
there more and
more young
ones like him?
trauma that is making them feel
that way, that they need that food
as a substitute.’
There are certainly no quick fixes.
Today, Lily weighs 8 st — the same
as a small adult woman — and it
remains a daily struggle for mum
Lana to control her appetite.
‘I pretty much have to starve her
to get her to lose any weight,’ she
says. ‘Even after a meal she says
she’s starving — she will pinch her
belly and tell it to stop hurting.’
Yet there is, at least, some light
at the end of this tunnel.
‘She does still struggle daily, but
she now has more understanding,
which helps,’ says Lana. ‘She
knows what’s wrong.’
Six months after filming ended,
Tommy’s weight is on a downward
trajectory: he’s lost 3.5 st — taking
him to 19 st — and is sticking to a
strict calorie-controlled plan.
While he still suffers from chronic
fatigue, his stint in hospital led to
more regular sleeping patterns.
‘I think being in hospital was a
trigger of realising quite how big
he had got,’ says Esther.
‘He had lost control of his own
well-being. It made me realise we
w e r e a l l g o i n g t o h a v e t o
work together.’
n 100 Kilo Kids: Obesity SOS is
on Channel 4 at 9pm tonight.5-year-old lily:
7 stone
On the scales: Harry is
weighed in the clinic. Left,
Lana and daughter LilyPictures: Channel 4/
John laWrenCe