Lizzie Velasquez gets a lot of looks. The 23-year-old Texas State University student is 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighs only 58 pounds. "I cannot gain weight," Velasquez said, who describes the rare syndrome that blocks her body from storing fat. As a result, Velasquez is skin and bones despite eating all day.
"My stomach is so small that I cannot eat much," she said. "So about 30 minutes after eating I'm ready to eat again. I eat a lot just to keep my energy up." The cause of the syndrome is so rare it has no name, it’s a mystery. Only two people are known to have this disease and a number of genetic tests have turned up nothing.
"She is losing all her fat," Dr. Atul Chopra said, a resident in medical genetics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, describing that the cell layer on the skin that fills with dietary fat is missing. "I just do not know why."
She said that she is happy to have been able to live through her young school years when she was bullied a lot for looking like a monster.
