Meet The Girl Who Must Eat Every 15 Minutes To Stay Alive

Hey ATS, came across a story of a woman who must eat every 15 minutes to stay alive...

Can you imagine how taxing it would be to have to worry about eating so often to live. It would be a nightmare having to stop every 15 minutes to refuel your body.

The unbelievable thing is that this woman eats up to 60 meals a day and does not gain any weight. what a nightmare.

Most of us struggle to keep our weight down, but not Lizzie Velasquez. The 21-year-old woman from Austin, Texas actually has to eat every 15 minutes to say alive:

Miss Velasquez has a rare condition which prevents her from gaining weight even though she eats up to 60 small meals a day.

Despite consuming between 5,000 and 8,000 calories daily, the communications student, has never tipped over 4st 3lbs.

“I weigh myself regularly and if I gain even one pound I get really excited,” said 5ft 2 ins Miss Velasquez, who wears size triple zero clothes.

She is one of 3 people in the world with a rare disease that prevents her from gaining weight:

Professor Garg and his team now believe Lizzie may have a form of Neonatal Progeroid Syndrome (NPS) which causes accelerated ageing, fat loss from the face and body, and tissue degeneration. People with PRS often have triangular and prematurely aged faces with a pointy nose.

www.impactlab.com...-57390
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[edit on 29-6-2010 by TV_Nation]

That's just horrible for her.

My question. How does this interact with bad cholesterol ?
She could munge at mac Donalds every day without having a heart attack ?

reply to post by TV_Nation



Oh, I couldn't imagine how horrible that would be. While the article doesn't specify, I wonder if that is round the clock? Could you imagine having to wake every 15 minutes to eat something? What a nightmare for her parents, while she was growing up!

My only hope for her is that she gets to live as normal a life as possible, and that she isn't treated too much like a guinea pig, being only one of 3 known people with this disease.

Here is a link to a more in depth article regarding this young woman and her illness:

New York Daily News

this is a real question. does that mean she needs to poop every 15 min? im just saying???

What would it feel like if she died? I mean, I am very curious. Would she die of exhaustion or would her kidneys give out or organs fail or what? Would it really hurt to die like that, or would be really fast?

reply to post by jessieg


She'd most likely die of heart failure caused by protein catabolism.

i wonder if anyone is studying this woman's blood to find a way to get that metabolism to everyone.

reply to post by maria_stardust



Thanks for the other article. What an amazing woman. So confident, and straight forward about her life.

Reading something like this could boost anybody who is having a poor, pity me day!

I wouldn't want her metabolism. But if we could reduce it to be like one third of what she has, then maybe we could just about eat what we want and burn it all off, resulting in slim bodies with some fat, but not too much.

And we think we have problems.

Good luck to her, stay strong.

triangle face? type of alien is u ask me

I wonder how bad it would hurt to die like that? I mean, what if for some reason she isn't able to get food and she dies. How fast would that happen? Would it hurt a lot? I guess a heart attack would hurt, but maybe it wouldn't if you went unconscious first.