Until your son is ready to loose weight for himself, there is really nothing else you can do. He is 17 and until he relizes he needs help, he will probaly always yo yo diet. You have taken the right steps, and tried your best, the rest is up to him.

To me the best you can do is be a good role model regardless of what your weight is. Eating right, having a healthy home and exercising.

There are many dear friends and family members in my life who are killing themselves as morbidly obese people, some diabetic, who do not choose to change.

Having said that, there are many who see the example I set and all the positive changes in my life and follow me. Weight is a complicated thing, I can tell you the best tools I have but that doesn't mean that you will find them as helpful or that you will use them. I recommend that you get counseling because this is a family thing and you are in pain about his condition.

Do you really want to help him? What do you have control over? What don't you? What is your responsibility and what is not? Who pays for his rent and his food and basically enables his addiction to food that keeps him morbidly obese and sick? This isn't meant to sound harsh, just logical.

I have the training and the experience to tell you how to change your life, your household and your part of the equation. That doesn't mean it will change him or his part of the equation. If you think you are ready to do whatever it takes to heal your part of the picture, I can help with that.

I'm a single mom. My top weight: 352, my goal weight: 140, my current weight: 309 and I've lost 3.5 inches in my waist in the last month. My daughter has learned from both my mistakes and my successes and chooses to be an athlete and a healthy eater.

I just want to add that from reading a lot this week about hunger hormones. I am convinced that people that are obese are not lazy pigs that don't care. It is not there fault. Almost all obese people are leptin resistant. That keeps them hungry all the time. Some of these hunger hormones, ghrelin or example are stronger than most addictive drugs. The bigger you are the more of these hormones you have. It is a fat trap that will power has little power over.

It is a must not to have bad foods in your house. If it comes in a box it is probably bad. Read the labels and throw out anything with high fructose corn syrup and other forms of fructose (sugar) except fruit that will cause leptin resistance.

Throw out all oils except olive oil. Raw unsalted nuts (eat a variety) are a good fat that also helps with weight loss (1 1/2 to 2 ounces a day). Thats about a 1/4 of a cup. It is high in fiber and not all the calories are digested. If you can afford it have your son take high dose fish oil. At the dose needed it is about $19 every 15 days. Not the stuff from your local stores. It is not strong enough. I can tell you where I get it. It helps with silent inflammation and hunger.

Eat mostly chicken breast, fish, egg whites, and soy. Avoid red meat, pork and food high in arachidonic acid. See http://www.cbn.com/health/naturalhealth/drsears_arachidonicacid.aspx

Eat fresh vegetables and fruit in all your meals. Have health snacks ready to eat.

Wow that's about what I weighed at 17. I might have weighed more and my top recorded weight is 374, I'm nearly down 150 lbs with more to go unfortunately. For the longest time I was the biggest person in my family. All were somewhat overweight and as I have lost many of them have gained. My family was deeply concerned about my weight but Jaxswife is right about one thing. Your son has to want it and do it for himself ultimately. But I will give you some advice.

When I was in elementary school and first started gaining weight I went to my mom and cried and told her how the other kids picked on me and she responded with I know it's hard sweetie. I was a little chubby in school to. I've been there. In retrospect I wish she had said... well what are we going to do about it? Let's get you in soccer and eat healthier as a family!

Also I didn't start losing weight until I moved away from mom. I love her, but she really is the biggest enabler. If you want your son to lose weight everyone in your family has to go on a diet. It's not fair to him to sit down and eat a salad and have his family tell him he needs to lose weight while the rest of the family is eating cheese burgers and deserts. I look back on our eating habits as a family and say no wonder I got so fat. Fast food. Our ideas of vegatables were mac and cheese, baked potatoes with all the fixin's, mashed potatoes loaded with butter and sour cream, alfredo noodles. Occationally we had green beans or corn, but never squash, never spinch, no sweet potatoes, no califlower. On top of that my mom makes the best high calorie food, chicken fried steak, everything always smothered in gravey. Steaks covered in butter. I have to ask you. Your son did not wake up at 325. Someone made those dinners and brought that fast food home and he may be the biggest, but I bet he's not the only one in the family who could stand to lose a few or get more exercise. I'm with cinnamint, the best thing you can do is tow the line and eat better and work out more for yourself. Be a rolemoled. Make the home an environment of health. Get rid of the junk food and cook healthier dinners. Ultimately your son has to do it on his own, but he did not get to this point alone. I must say to as a child of an enabler it would have been nice to hear my mom say she was sorry for not being the best role model and for not doing more to give me a healthy start in life. No one is perfect and when you know better you do better, but you should accept some responsibility for your child and not put it all on him and share in the hard work it takes to lose weight by working out and eating healthy right along side him. I'm sorry if this all sounds hard, but being a 25 year old who has spent the past two years trying to get healthy, who still has a ways to go, who missed out on all the sports and proms of high school and friends, and who was faced with getting a very expensive surgury, (I didn't. I lost it the old fashioned way), but who now is getting the sagging skin of a woman much old with many more children and is faced with being deformed from the excess weight I have carried or paying 20k to have major surgury just to look normal under my clothes. I do have some resentment. All this could have been spared if my parents had given me a healthier start in life. I look at young obese children now and it angers me to see the depression, health issues, and quality of life that they're going to have because their parents didn't act like parents and set good examples and provide a healthy home. Such a waste.

I am happy to hear from everybody.

I have had issues with my husband, we have a child born with a disability, we had to make major changes in residence when my son was 5 and moved to a neighborhood where he waited a long time to make good friends. He is gifted and he experienced a lot of alienation. Plus I suffered from major major major depression.
It has not been at all easy for him.

When we went to a speciallist, she told us that when obesity runs in families (his uncles and aunts on his fathers side are both over 300 pounds and his uncle was up to 500 at one point), while my side of the family also had people over 260 pounds.

We tried to help him, but we failed. I put him in every sport .since he was 5, football, soccer, swimming, baseball, basketball and football. He also had some gross motor defects and was not able to keep up with the other children, and deformities in arms.

When my doctor told me recently that 80% of it is genetics and we have about 25% control. Alot of guilt dissipated. I did not say I was not guilty however.

His father was also a big man and I watched hin take him out to McDonalds and order double food, pizza with cheese fries and cheesesteaks, junk in the house.

My husband still controls the money and brings in the junk. I do not eat sweets, so my husband brings in the ice cream and cookies. I buy salmon, mustard and turnip greens, pasta, tomato sauce and fresh fruits. I introduced my son to fresh tuna and tilapia.

He had an addiction to the video games since 7 years old.

I made alot of mistakes. I currently have paid for a ywca membership for him for the past 3 years and he is old enough to go after school and work out.

However, I am not in control of everything he eats anymore.

Thank you for all your comments. I really appreciate all the advice.

ps thanks for the web site on leptin and the advice about modeling behavior and removing the "fructose and sugars" from the house.

That's a nice statistic cinnamintstick but the hubby is already thinking the reason to my obesity is not caring enough and just pure laziness when in reality it's all the weight gainer meds I took in the past....

At 17, the more of a fuss you make about it, the more he will fight you on it. To him it will feel like rejection, no matter how you say it. I say be the best role model you can be. Invite him to do active things with you- go for a walk, go bowling, play tennis, whatever. make and eat healthy meals. If you want, you might tell him that you are trying to get healthier and wonder if he would be supportive and help you through it, or you could just model the behavior and say nothing. Good luck and bless you for wanting to help him. I wish my parents would have done something for me at that age.

Last year, when I was seventeen, my mom pushed me to lose weight all the time. She wasn't concerned with my appearance, she knew it was taking a toll on my health. But whenever she pulled, I pushed--farther away from her.

I was not ready to make changes in my life. I had emotional reasons for staying big. I felt safer that way.

I just started on my weight loss journey, about a month ago. because I am ready for it now. When your son is ready, he will do it. And he'll need your love and support.

I have a friend who is over 500 lbs and 21 years old. Recently he started taking walks with his mom. He also is eating salads where his only vegetables in the past was french fries. Its a start.

my parents pushed me and pushed me to be a healthy weight and to be honest it made me mad. And when ever they brought up my weight I binged... i dont know if this is just me or if its the same with other people, but last Christmas my parents were all over me about my weight and I just decided last week that im ready to lose weight. thats how long it took me to feel like its not them im doing it for its me. Any sooner it would have felt like Im doing it all for them. I hope this helps, good luck

I am so pleased to get so many replya and I am taking all of your advice. I really appreciate your wisdom and advice.

I had an after-thought the other day and I realized you probably should make him stay in therapy. A lot of people do not realize how emotionally degrading being obese is to a teenager. He might stay in therapy if you let him pick a therapist he feels comfortable with, you could visit two or three within your budget and let him make the choice.

My comment is coming from a someone who is a daughter to a mom who pushed me to lose weight. I think the thing that kept me from really wanting to do anything was the fact that she was hypocritical. She would tell me to go exercise, while she is on the couch watching TV. There could be many things that underlie this behavior, and I would encourage you to look at all things: psychological, physical, emotional and spiritual and see if there is anything underneath the behavior. In my case there was and by "treating" symptoms not the cause, things never got solved until I dealt with the cause, but not before the relationship between my mother and I was catastrophically damaged. Good luck!