Oh hey. When did you meet my grandmother?

nevermind, too much personal info

Yeah, this too. When my mother was trying to advocate for me (in elementary school), a direct quote was "Look, Mrs. Kiana, you don't understand. You put them on the bus, and we take it from there."

This is your reaction because you are an intellectual and a scientist. :) You would be honestly amazed at the number of people who will do crazy things just because that is the way their family did them or because an authority figure told them to do it that way.

It is not even so much "things rich kids do" as "things from families with cultural capital do". If you are from that sort of family, it is mind-bogglingly obvious. If nobody you know has ever gone to any college other than possibly a local state U or CC for which they paid with loans and got admitted with their average SAT/ACT from their first attempt (or especially if nobody you know has ever gone to any college at all), it is a foreign concept.

Good book, and there's also a free training program at startbodyweight.com if he wants to get started without the investment. Even with access to a gym I highly recommend bodyweight exercises. It can mean a lot to a teenager to be able to bust out push-ups and pull-ups, which are much easier to show off at a party than squats or bench presses.

I agree with Greta. I was just watching a show not too long ago. The woman needed to go low-carb, and her whole family did it so that she wouldn't feel alone. I just thought that was the sweetest and most supportive family.

Personally, I would rather call or write the department and gush about how wonderful she is instead of sending flowers. Edit: I take letters from appreciative students and pin them up in my office cabinet to look at when I'm having one of those why-do-I-bother-nothing-makes-any-difference days.

No, the only issue is that you don't want to accidentally get a book that presupposes a prerequisite she hasn't had. For example, you wouldn't want to accidentally get a calc-based physics book when you were expecting algebra-based, or pick up a book that looks cool but is actually for an advanced elective. In order to evaluate this, you can google the isbn of the book and find out what college classes it's usually assigned for.

Another issue is that going on and off the low-carb diet makes many people feel terrible. So you have to be the one who skips the birthday cake when everyone else is having some, and skips the pizza when there's a class pizza party, and instead eats your packed low-carb lunch, and a lot of teens really can't handle that. Heck, a lot of adults can't handle that.

Those are probably still fine though, even if they're dried, just soak them in warm water for a while and they'll plump up again. Unless they're actively moldy.

It is an enormous contributing factor. We have massive amounts of calories available for most people and most of them are in processed foods that are deliberately designed to be non-satiating to encourage consumption. Non-satiating foods tend to be the ones that drive an insulin response in the first place, and because they encourage overconsumption, they lead to weight gain, and excess fat also drives an insulin response, which leads to more hunger and more consumption, and it is just a vicious, vicious circle. And buying real foods that are more filling requires more knowledge, more preparation, more money, and ignoring the seductively singing Sirens of your taste buds and every food advertisement that you see.

Plus, for some people, making a "never again" rule leads into this feeling of "Oh I blew it and had a donut and ruined my diet, I'll start my diet again tomorrow ... but as long as I blew it I'll finish the box"

Kinda funny but I ended up with skim milk and full-fat cheese. Since I never found even whole milk in the least bit filling shifting to the lower fat made sense for me, plus quite honestly I prefer the taste now -- whole milk seems to leave a thick coating in my mouth if I drink it. There's plenty of fat from other sources (like cheese) in my diet.

Yeah there's a lot of stuff. I made a new rule (based on a friend's rule) that for every $5 an item costs that I see and suddenly want I have to leave it on my amazon wishlist for 1 day before purchasing it. So if I see a $150 item I have to wait a month to decide if I'm really going to use it. This has helped a lot with curbing impulse purchases that end up not getting used.

I don't make these but I make a big frittatta which is pretty similar (it's like making a cake vs. cupcakes). Broccoli works well -- I dump in frozen chopped broccoli. I've also done the diced frozen peas and carrots. Or you can just leave the peppers out and put in a bit of extra mushrooms and onions and spinach. They're not really an essential part.

That too! The whole "this food is for this time of day" is such an arbitrary convention.

Lucy and Bluegoat have some great suggestions. In the larger sense, if he's open to it, thinking beyond "breakfast food" can be very freeing. There's no reason that we HAVE to restrict ourselves to cereal, eggs, bacon/sausage, yogurt/fruit, and bread products in the morning. I mean, this morning I had a leftover chicken thigh and yesterday I had a hamburger (both with vegetables).

Well, personally I've lost over 50 lbs since I switched from regular to diet. That being said, I'm in the process of switching away because of the cost. Like you, I found I don't function very well without caffeine -- I went 2 weeks without none after tapering (so didn't really have withdrawal), and I found that I was just not able to adult, either at work or at home. I was scraping through work things at the last minute and my home went completely to pot. So I ordered 100mg caffeine tabs off amazon (I found later that Fred's (pharmacy chain) sells them more cheaply) and I have one every morning and if I have an afternoon when I need to be on the ball I have another around noon. It's working pretty well so far.

Yep. And whatever method he chooses, it needs to be a sustainable change of habits. Many people (especially younger men) don't find point-counting sustainable long-term although it is a great way to become aware of what you are eating in the short-term. And ... regardless of weight ... losing 30 lbs and keeping it off is going to be a lot better than losing 100 and putting it back on. Making 'fitness friends' who are his age or a bit older really helps with the peer support to keep the motivation going after the first flush of "hey the numbers are going down" starts to fade. Fitness groupies can be (although they're not always) tremendously supportive of even very large people who are chugging along and trying to power through. Side note, but a really interesting story about a former extremely heavy internet troll turned fitness enthusiast after an attempt to troll a bodybuilding site went awry. http://www.today.com/news/700-pound-online-bully-transforms-his-life-help-those-he-t54476

This. Furthermore, frankly, it's a lot better in the long run that he get to quit now after having one terrible semester and really convincing his parents that they can't make him, than drag through multiple semesters of being in school because mom and dad want him to be there, while not really having anything he wants to study, and using up time, money, financial aid eligibility (lots of failed classes mess with your eligibility), and tanking his GPA when/if he finds something he DOES want to study.

Since he apparently had a good experience with Apologia, why not do their advanced chemistry?

Two of my friends lost massive amounts of weight on WW. It was over 150 lbs for the guy (he's tall) and a bit over half that for girl (she's short). It's been a decade and while she's gone up maybe 10 lbs from her low weight both of them are still maintaining an impressive loss after having used it to learn how to eat in a sustainable manner. Neither still pays a membership to WW.

What does the org and bio chem class list as a prerequisite in the college catalog? You should be able to look this up, and that would help a lot with giving a reasonable answer.

I second the recommendation for college algebra. It will help keep his algebra skills sharp for the SAT/ACT (which helps with scholarships), and if he dual enrolls and/or passes a CLEP test which is accepted by his college, he may need to take no further math in college (some colleges and some majors require college algebra instead of statistics). There should be a fair amount of review of algebra 2 so it shouldn't be a large time-sink.