PORTLAND – A cook accused of fatally shooting four people over Labor Day weekend has lost 55 pounds in jail, putting his health in danger and prompting a court to allow a sheriff to force-feed him.

Christian Nielsen, who has been eating little and exercising obsessively, has dropped from 158 pounds to 103 pounds and is being monitored in the medical ward of the Cumberland County Jail, Sheriff Mark Dion said Thursday.

The concern, Dion said, is that Nielsen has lost so much weight that his body could begin breaking down quickly without intervention.

“Our medical staff believes he has begun that slide. That’s what adds to the urgency to our request,” said Dion, who won a judge’s permission Thursday afternoon to insert a feeding tube into Nielsen to provide nutrition.

Nielsen, who turned 32 on Thursday, was ordered committed Wednesday to Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta for assessment and treatment.

But Nielsen remained at the jail on Thursday and it could be days or even weeks before he’s transferred, Dion said. Nielsen can’t be taken to Augusta until his health stabilizes, the sheriff added.

Authorities say Nielsen confessed to the slayings, which took place while he was staying at the Black Bear Bed & Breakfast, a 130-year-old converted farmhouse near the Sunday River ski resort in Newry. He was working as a cook at another inn nearby.

On Sept. 1, authorities said, he killed James Whitehurst, 50, of Batesville, Ark., a handyman who had been staying at the B&B and helping out the owner. Authorities said Nielsen burned and disposed of Whitehurst’s body in the woods in Upton.

On Sept. 3, he allegedly killed the Black Bear’s owner, Julie Bullard, 65. The next day, Labor Day, he allegedly killed Bullard’s daughter Selby, 30, and her friend Cindy Beatson, 43, when they arrived at the inn unexpectedly. All three women were dismembered.

Nielsen, who is being held without bail while awaiting trial on four counts of murder, was transferred the Cumberland County Jail days after his arrest after he allegedly attacked a fellow inmate at the Oxford County Jail in Paris.

He was placed on a suicide watch in December after using a disposable razor to make cuts on his scalp that resembled the letter “X.”

Since then, Nielsen has not created any trouble at the jail and has been a “compliant inmate,” Dion said. However, the sheriff said, Nielsen did “articulate his wish to die” at least once during his hunger strike.

Dion said that Nielsen has been held in the jail’s medical ward since the hunger strike began taking a toll on his body. The feeding tube will be inserted Friday morning at the jail, he said.

Nielsen’s attorney, Ron Hoffman, didn’t return a message left at his office seeking comment on the situation.