Obesity is now an illness.

The BBQ Pit
181

[QUOTE=Coldfire]
I’m guessing for the moment that you mean me, seeing as how I brought this up in another Pit thread during the past week.

I don’t know if I’m oversimplifying, to be honest. I don’t think I am. Let me first state a few things that I take as absolute facts, based on the personal experience of being a European who happens to be in America quite frequently.
[ul][li]Americans are larger than Europeans. Not taller, on average - certainly not taller than Dutchmen. But a lot bigger.To anyone (American or European) who spends a number of weeks on the other side of the pond, it’s crystal clear WHY Americans are larger on average: they move around less, and eat a LOT more. Again: all on average. [/li][/quote]

I don’t think anyone, even in this thread, is arguing about how the problem came about. That is, the physical facts of how it came about.

[quote]
[li]A small percentage of overweight people have one or more medical conditions that make it virtually impossible for them to lose weight. The vast majority of overweight people do not, however.[/li][/quote]

I don’t think anyone is arguing against this either.

[quote]
[li]In addition to the points above about portion size and mobility, American society tends to be somewhat of an excuse culture at times. Don’t rake me over the coals for this, it’s a personal observation, but a lot of Americans always seem so keen to find an excuse for a certain characteristic or situation that is undesirable. I don’t know why this is, nor do I claim to know the solution. All I know is that again, I’m reading a thread about obesity, and again, the posters saying their obesity is caused by medical conditions, outweigh those who say their calory intake is too big for the amount of energy they burn by a factor of what, five to one? [/ul]It just doesn’t make sense to me. [/li][/quote]
? I am not seeing the posts you are. That is, I’m not seeing 5 to 1 posters claming that their obesity is caused by medical conditions AND that they can’t do anything about it.

As to the first part of your comment, yes, Americans can be an “excuse” people from time to time. This is not to say that their original reasons for having gotten and stayed fat aren’t also valid. I’m not sure what people want them to do, crawl and grovel for forgiveness for allowing others to see them out in society? These folks feel horrible enough as it is, yes, they may adopt some face saving excuses for their obesity. And yes, in some, this may be as far as it goes, but having been in the industry, I know that there are ways to reach these folks, and to help them. It’s awesome to see a young lady come to me at the end of a semester and beaming say “OMG, I can’t believe it, I lost X pounds in your class, tell me more”.

Again, if a person says " I’ve tried everything, and can’t lose the weight" just because you and I know that there are ways for them to lose weight, doesn’t mean that THEY can figure it out. Again, with especially the morbidly obese, it takes more than just dropping a calore or 100 and taking up some gym time.

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CanvasShoes, your post looks a bit overweight. Which part would you like me to surgically remove? :slight_smile:

(In other words: I’m sure you didn’t want it to come out that way. What do I erase?)

183

Dad DRAT IT all to thunderation anyhow!!! @## (that’s about the extent of my swearing, unless I get hit upside the head with something heavy :D)

Sorry about that Coldfire I need to trim my nails and I somehow clumsily hit submit when I was only halfway through.

That’s very cool, but it certainly wasn’t “simple” was it? I think some of you are mistaking “it’s not AS simple as 'eat less, exercise more” as saying “eat less, exercise more” doesn’t work, or is impossible. We’re not, we’re saying it’s not simple.

Is it a good excuse? NO. But for those who don’t know the first thing about tweaking and how to make an exercise and eating program work, it’s a REASON for the nonce, (until they DO gain the education and know how), that they haven’t been successful.

For instance you say it took you 3 months to get to where you are, and you still have a way to go? Imagine how it would feel for someone who has been working and working at it, and “depriving” themselves for 2 months (how long it can frequently take, especially for older females, to have ANY outward signs of improvement), and not seeing a single change.

For people who don’t know how it works, it is very easy to see how they would believe “nothing works”.

That’s super!

[quote]
[li]I KNOW my situation doesn’t apply to everyone.I agree that obesity has become such a problem in America, that bickering over labeling it a disease or not seems petty: whichever works, people, because the point of no return is frighteningly near. All theories of WHY aside, something’s seriously wrong in America, and it needs to be addressed. [/li][/quote]
bolding mine
See, here is where I personally believe, is an area that is THE key in why it’s happening in America. The why, not the how is key to fixing the problem IMHO.

As everyone has already stated in this thread, and the countless others, the HOW is obvious. People in this country (and other western societies are catching up, it’s not just america), are eating too much of the wrong sorts of foods, and getting not enough physical activity.

That is indisputable. And I’d bet that if asked politely, and not judgmentally and in an accusing way, most obese Americans would agree that that is how they got there. If, and until we address the WHY of it, I don’t think that the problem is going to go away.

Some of the 'whys" that need to be addressed in our country.

1.) The tendency of Americans to pursue the American dream and “keeping up with the Joneses”. By way of working 80+ hours a week, and trying to be superpeople, leaving no time or energy for proper nutrition and exercise.

2.) Lack of education on HOW to work out and eat properly and effectively. Education in weight training (key in most women especially over 25 or 30), education in how long it takes to see results, education in NOT viewing food as some sort of evil, (thus setting themselves up for binges when they deny themselves for months at a time etc).

3.) Education in the schools (which they are starting to do), so that we can prevent childhood chubbiness from turning into adulthood obesity.

4.) Fairness in Govt subsidization of food groups. That is, give as much subsidization to fruits and vegetables as to the longstanding ones given to corn.

[quote]
If labeling obesity a “disease” is going to do the trick (or at least part of it), then go for it.[li]I am NOT bashing anyone who’s fat. I am NOT bashing Americans. I am NOT denying there are valid medical reasons behind some obesity cases. I do NOT think anyone on this thread or elsewhere on the boards is lying: I think they are convinced of their stories. I DO think that perhaps in some of those cases, they may be underestimating the extent to which they can indeed make a difference. [/list]So, here we go - time to hit submit. No doubt, some of this post will be seen as offensive to some. I assure you it’s not intended to be. [/li][/quote]
I agree, regarding the statement " DO think that perhaps in some of those cases, they may be underestimating the extent to which they can indeed make a difference. " But I think where you and some of the others posting here differ is in HOW we help the obese realize that. The constant, and useless mantra of "eat less, exercise more’ (I did it, therefore everyone else should stop being stupid, having excuses and do it too), is NOT the answer. An educated approach, taking into consideration ALL of the problem is.

No, I think that as you said, that’s what worked for YOU. And again, I don’t consider (nor, I think would most morbidly obese people), three months of hard labor and nothing “fun” to eat whatsoever as a “simple” fix. And again, for a huge number of people, not only is it a lot of work, but it includes necessary tweaking and so on and so on. AGain, that’s all we’re arguing when we complain about the stupid 'eat less, exercise more" saying. NOT that it is impossible.

184

That IS sad. sigh…

Yes, I do happen to agree with that assessment, that is, that it’s a cultural thing. Which is why I’m so adament about addressing the causes, and not just the symptoms. And addressing PROPER ways to address the symptoms when we do get to that part.

It’s kindof a pain at first, but once you’ve got a decent amount of dinners in your freezer it’s great.

OH!!! Sorry, I didn’t know that (I don’t know why). Ummm, not to sell my fave program too much, and if it’s not too nosy, you might want to check out Body for Life for some help in the workout department.

It’s nothing new, just old world weight lifting methods done in a user friendly format. Also, a program called Leanness Lifestyle a bit more restrictive than BFL, but really helpful in HOW to do it right regarding weights and so on.

185

Oh shoot!! I forgot you were a mod. I think the last 2/3s after I answer your first or second comment? Somewhere around there.

Thanks!!!

186

Please do. I was reading that and thinking "Wow, CanvasShoes’ family is the same size as Coldie’s, literally.

187

Conscious choice does NOT equal “simple road to obesity”. I have to agree that the choices people make when they grab that twinkie are NOT unconscious. They know what they’re doing, but the psychological issues that go into the choice of that twinkie (and the twinkies that come after) are ANYTHING but “simple”.

It is an addiction, and the hugest, and most damaging difference between this addiction, and that of other substance abuse, is that food is an addictive substance which a person CANNOT just stop altogether. It’s like telling an alcoholic “okay, you’re addicted to alcohol, you have to still drink it to stay alive, but you can’t drink “too much” or the “wrong kind” and to counteract this addiction you also have to add in specific physical activity”.

You have no way of knowing the agony and self recrimination that goes into the person choosing a comfort food, and beatng themselves up for it, both before, during and after the eating of the “forbidden” food.

It’s ANYTHING but simple. Conscious decision does NOT equal simple. And conscious decision does not make the obese person an immoral creature, or stupid, or deserving of the hatred and venom that is so often directed at them, and their addiction.

188

I’d say it’s been quite simple for me. But then, I had a few factors to my advantage:[ul][li]I’m still young, and able-bodied. If I want to work out, I can.[]My company has a gym I can use for free. I schedule my workout times right after work. It costs me not a lot more time than the actual workout, i.e. 2 hours a week.[]I got a good wake-up call with that doctor’s visit. Scared the shit out of me. For someone with a less perfect medical past, it might not have been much motivation. It was for me, though.[]I wasn’t that much overweight (20 kilos, tops), so I started seeing results pretty soon. []My wife is an absolute knock-out, and I’m trying to keep up at least a bit. :)[/ul]Some of these factors will be very different for others, and I realise that it can make things harder. I never really qualified as obese, although I sure was (and still am) “fat”, IMHO. [/li]
So, no judgment on my part. I’m just saying that for me, it can be done, and I’m doing it. Whereas a few months ago, I pretty much resigned myself to getting fatter and fatter, using some of the excuses seen here, too.

I’m just saying it feels good to be able to make the change, and I hope others can too.

189

Well, perhaps I was wrong to say angry. But based on so many of the posts here on the dope (not just this thread), that the language used is just so…hateful and angry sounding, if not actually angry.

Interesting, particularly considering that the reality is that the poor, in THIS day and age, are the more likely to be obese.

That’s true, and I understand that, it’s just that how does it affect people if someone ELSE is fat, it’s not as if you’re (the nonfat, fat hating person) being forced to date them, or watch them in movies or anything.

Or is it a sort of a factor of “how dare you be fat and reduce my pool of available attractive people from which to choose?” Sometimes I get a faint impression of that sort of attitude. Could just be my imagination :smiley:

190

Anger? I don’t know about anger. I do think that many people are mean. Meaner ‘n’ cat piss. MEAN.

It’s mean to yell insults at a fat person who is walking down the street, minding their own business. It’s nothing more than just flat-out-MEAN. Yet people do this all the time. They treat fat people with contempt, talk about them like they are less than human in some aspect, and so forth. People, in general, are mean, I find.

Of course this isn’t rational, especially when the mean people know that the fat person isn’t rich, and that their “overindulgence” isn’t causing others to starve (especially in America). Most mean people don’t know anything about the fat people that they despise, but they are mean to them, nontheless.

Yes, this is true. And people are mean to ugly people too. So if you are fat and ugly, people will be doubly mean to you. Charming, isn’t it?

These reasons you give—gluttony and ugliness—are no excuse for mean behavior. And it’s obvious, some people are mean. Mean, mean, mean, to other people who are minding their own business and doing nothing to anyone else, other than walking down the street and breathing oxygen.

So, when I find that someone is mean to a fat person or an ugly person, I think that says a whole lot about them. They are far worse than the fat or ugly person. They are mean. And, apparently, some people in this thread are suffering from a terminal case of meanness.

191

Oh, it is absolutely not your imagination. It’s like, “How dare you take up space that could be occupied by a hot babe whom I could hit on!” Or else it’s, “How dare you, you’re taking up space that could be occupied by a hot babe whom I could ogle!” Something like that.

192

20 kg? Are you sure you did the math right? 20 kg? As in 44lb? Dude, that’s half a supermodel! That much extra wouldn’t make you slightly overweight, it would make you borderline obese. And you lost that in 3 months? Man, it took me 18 months to lose that, and I busted my ass!

I think I hate you. :frowning:

193

Nonononono… wait with the hate. :slight_smile:

I weighed 105 kilos 2 months ago. My target weight is 85, although I’m happy with reaching 90 and seeing how well things go from there. I’m currently 98 kilograms, so I lost about 7, or a little over 15 lbs. Only one sixth of a supermodel, really. :slight_smile:

194

Or how dare you be fat and not BE a hot babe whom I could ogle.

195

Ah, gotcha ya. And while you’re satisfied with one sixth of a supermodel, I can usually eat a whole one myself. Hey, they’re small!

Still, 15 lbs in 2 months is rather impressive. Any faster rate of weight loss might actually border on dangerous.

196

A car crash victim can not “uncrash” and repair his/her injuries.
A cancer patient can not “ungrow” his/her cancerous tumors.
An AIDS patient can do nothing about the virus which infects his/her body.

Generally speaking (damn I’m getting tired of having to type that each time) a fat person can eat less and exercise more and lose weight. It’s not going to be easy, and I recognize and can sympathize with that better than you may know. But we have to stop making excuses for them, or nothing will change.

See my above statement about car crash victims.

When I worked at the gym, a lady came in one day named Jeannie. She was about 5’2", 330 pounds. I think that falls under the obese catagory. She told me what she wanted to do (lose weight) and why she wanted to do it (avoid health problems), I showed her around, and we went back to my office so I could show her the membership options we had.

In private she opened up and told me about how she’d been fat all her life. She was addicted to food. She told me about how she would eat 4-6 Pop Tarts a day for breakfast, four or five Wendy’s or McDonald’s hamburgers for lunch, and sometimes she’d just have cake or pie for dinner. Her diet was horrendous.

I told her that I would be willing to help her, but she was going to have to make some changes in her lifestyle. She couldn’t join a gym and only walk on the treadmill for 10 minutes twice a week at 1 mph and expect drastic changes. She would have to change her lifestyle drastically. And that meant massive changes to her diet.

I set her up with an appointment with our nutritionist and met with her a few times to show her how to do circuit training. She started coming in 3 or 4 times a week. I lost track of her shortly thereafter when I left the gym for another job.

I still work out there. About a year later, this lady came up and said hi. I told her I was sorry, but I didn’t recognize her. It was Jeannie! She had lost 150 pounds (no, that is not a typo). Her health had improved immensely, she was feeling much better, and she wasn’t craving the sugary food the way she used to. Working with the nutritionist, she had developed a diet in which she ate six times a day, but was eating much better. Also, working out had decreased her appetite for the bad stuff, while increasing it for the good stuff.

Jeannie is just one person, but her story is not unique. I saw over 100 seriously obese people like Jeannie completely change their body and their life. So when I see people like you comparing them to crack addicts and AIDS victims while doing whatever you can to shift the blame to an under or overactive thyroid gland, it bothers me.

I’m a firm believer in “you reap what you sow”. If you do hardcore drugs, expect health problems. If you have lots of unprotected sex with lots of people, expect an STD. If you drive recklessly, expect to get in a car crash. If your diet is unhealthy, expect to get fat.

As soon as you stop arguing from authority.

197

That’s a great story, and inspirational. And she was probably greatly encouraged by what you said. If you had said “I hate you because you’re raising my taxes, you lazy glutton”, she might be dead today.

Something occurred to me earlier today while in a meeting with bariatric people – those that have tried exercise, tried counselling, tried eating like rabbits, etc. etc. etc. and still can’t lose weight are likely the ones that will get the status of “illness.” They are the ones who have taken responsibility for their health but nothing has worked. They must take it to the next step of surgery. Why would you begrudge them that?

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For the most part these people are lying. They will swear up-and-down they’re eating correctly, eating less, exercising, or whatever. But they’re not. They’re lying. They will also swear “diets don’t work for them.” But permanent, long-term changes in a person’s diet will have an effect. These people just forget to tell you that they chose not to stick to the diet.

One real-life example:

I have an aunt whom I would estimate weighs 300 lbs.

She’s constantly bemoaning about her weight. And of course, “it’s not her fault.” She claims she has a “condition” or “disorder,” low metabolism, etc.

A number of other family members suggested diet and exercise.

“I’ve tried dieting and exercising. It doesn’t work for me.” (Mmm, I see. So the laws of physics don’t work for you?)

At any rate, she also claims to eat like a bird, and watches everything that goes in her mouth.

So a few months ago I was at her house. I open the refrigerator, and what did I see? 3 sticks of butter, 2 jars of mayonnaise, cheese, donuts, ice cream, cake, etc. It made me sick just looking at it.

Suffice to say I no longer listen to her pity excuses…

199

You know this, for a fact? That all these people are lying? How do you know this? What proof can you provide to back up this absolute knowledge?

You don’t know that it did not did not work for her.

While this would give anyone pause, it is not proof positive that she eats massive amounts of food every day. I can have a stick of butter in my fridge for a very long time. I don’t eat a lot of butter. (I am not claiming to eat like a bird, I just don’t eat a lot of butter.) But if you saw butter in my fridge, you’d assume that I was wolfing it down every day, I suppose.

I also have a full jar of mayonaise in my fridge. It’s been in there for a very long time, and it’s been full all that time. Same goes for (horrors!) cheese. Yes, I dare have cheese in my fridge. The nerve!

Yeesh. Just seeing food in a fridge made you “sick”? What? Was it crawling with maggots? What? It’s just food.

I think you have serious issues, my man.

Now, with that said, sure, I know people who claim to not eat much, but who, in fact, do eat too much. It’s annoying to hear their bleating and it is a good idea to turn a deaf ear, but to get all “sick” at the mere contents of their fridge, and to be so obviously angry, is over the top.

I think I detect more than a little whiff of mean coming from you.

200

You just made the argument for having insurance pay for the treatment of obesity.

Jeannie didn’t just “eat less and exercise more”. She was taught how to make better food choices by the nutritionist. She was taught how to do circuit training. And the gym may have provided her with follow-up training as she lost weight, so she could adjust the type of exercise to get her off a plateau.

She found a way to pay for this, but many people could not.

You also don’t know if she may have had therapy, although it may be possible that she just woke up one morning and said, “I think I’ll lose this weight”. Considering it took a year, I bet Jeannie has some sort of support, especially in the beginning before her body adjusted to the new eating plan. Her doctor may have placed her on medication, either for weight loss or depression.

These are exactly the types of treatment that Medicare would most likely cover, if it decided to cover obesity treatment at all (it is only considering it, and nobody, I’ll repeat, nobody has “declared” obesity to be a disease). Private insurances may follow suit if the government begins to cover such things. Studies show that the odds are against someone obese losing weight and keeping it off. This may be one way to even the odds a little.

I think more and better education about food, nutrition and exersize is also needed, but that goes to the cultural problems. Acceptance that obesity is a complex problem with both physical and psychological causes won’t make it okay to be obese. Nor does it excuse the individual from taking responsibilty for their actions any more than having treatments for alcoholism available made it okay for alcoholics to continue to drink.

I asked my Dad once why he never got help for his alcoholism and he said, “oh, we didn’t do things like that back then.” That didn’t excuse him for not getting help either then or later in his life when it was more available, and he died an alcoholic, that was his choice. But I’ll always regret that treatment wasn’t accepted when he was young enough to think it could have made a difference in his life. If I stay obese for the rest of my life, it will be because I continue to make bad choices. But hopefully, with or without Medicare or private insurance, I’ll find the support I need to make better choices.