Obesity is now an illness.

The BBQ Pit
201

My BMI was recently tested at 24.0, which means I’m only one point shy of being overweight…And I’m just about the slenderest 46 y.o. I know.

And this a couple of months after I’d substantially reduced the amount of lunch I eat. Breakfast has long been just a glass of skim-milk-and-protein-mix and maybe a piece of fruit. Of course, it was a company outdoor event where we were served lunch, and I’d eaten more than usual, right before takeing the test, so maybe that was a factor. But still…I can understand the difficult experience of really heavy people trying to lose weight.

202

I would never say that to a person’s face. But when I am speaking online about a group of people, and am not addressing any of them personally, I will speak my mind.

If a person makes a serious attempt at changing their lifestyle by going on a diet set up by a nutrition expert, gets on an exercise plan, and sticks with it (very important), but for some reason still can not lose the weight, then I do not mind helping them out. In fact, I’m all for it. It’s a serious medical condition which should be covered by their health insurer or, if they are over 60, Medicare.

But the people like Crafter_Man’s aunt for whom “no diets work” because they only stick with them for a few weeks, those people can bite me. These are the people for whom I am not willing to pay for a stomach stapling, because I don’t believe they are trying hard enough.

Another example. My buddy’s sister-in-law is obese. I don’t know how much she weighs, but I would say probably around 250-275. One day we were watching Shallow Hal, and when Gwyneth Paltrow’s character was lamenting about how she would try diets and nothing worked so she just ate whatever she wanted, the SIL said, “Damn straight, girlfriend!” and went right back to eating her Egg McMuffin. I have known this woman for about seven years now, and not once has she gone to a gym or considered a day without fast food. If I had to buy her gastric bypass surgery, especially if it was the government telling me I had to, I would be seriously pissed.

Changing your lifestyle to include a more balanced diet and exercise program will work. But you have to stick with it, and you can not cheat.

Do you understand where I’m coming from?

203

Good luck on your weight loss quest. But you probably need to do more than 2 hours a week for optimal results, and you should mix in some weight training too as it sounds like you’re doing strictly cardio. Muscles burn calories even when they’re not being used.

I think anyone here (in the U.S.) can find a way to get exercise if they need it, but sometimes it just doesn’t help. I saw something on TV a couple of years ago that had nothing to do about obesity per se–in fact, it was about social class in America. This one woman, who lived with her son in a trailer, walked 10 miles each way to her fast food service job, at which she surely was standing throughout her shift…and she was still stubby and plump looking. Certainly it doesn’t seem fair; how could anyone get more excercise than that? You’d think that’d give her absolute carte blanche to eat anything, but it didn’t.

204

Actually, my workout is a mix of cardio and muscle stuff. Though I do tend to focus on the cardio part. But it’s a well managed program, with licensed instructors and all that. The goal is weight loss, not making me look like Schwarzenegger. :slight_smile:

205

I doubt that the government is telling you to pay for it entirely out of your own pocket. How much do you think it would actually cost you, with the cost being spread over the number of people contibuting to Medicare? If I told you that it would cost you $0.00001 for her to get healthy, would you pay that much?

Also (and I’m beating my head against the wall here), do you think she can waltz into any hospital, demand a lap band or roux en Y (on your dime, no less), and just get it on demand? Do you think the surgeon will whip out a scalpel and start cutting right then and there? No? What other steps do you think might be involved? That’s not a rhetorical question. Go ahead, list a few steps:

Agreed, but it’s those qualifiers that become an issue. Believe it or not, for some people those issues are huge. Insurmountable, even. Or at least without some help. Sometimes that help costs money, and sometimes people come up with the money from insurance. I promise you, not one of them does it for the sole purpose of pissing you off.

Yeah, sure, and it makes sense. Do you understand that maybe the world is more complex than you give it credit for? And that not everyone posesses your almost god-like self-discipline?

206

It’s the principle of the thing. You don’t seem to understand, and you don’t seem to want to.

Tell me about it.

No, I don’t think it’s that easy. Obviously there are other steps involved. And I would be paying for them as well.

They will only be insurmountable if people like you keep giving them excuses.

Ever heard of Occam’s Razor?

Right, because that’s exactly what I said. :rolleyes: Ad hominems only make your argument look weak.

207

No, I guess I don’t understand. Maybe you’d better explain. Seems to me like you want to decide what is and is not permissable for insurance, regardless of whether you understand the nature of the illness.

I have no idea what you mean by this. I’ve been trying to get a certain point accross, and it seems that not one person has listened. Are you acknowledging that you haven’t reading my posts?

Well, let’s hear them.

What the fuck excuse was I giving? Quote me, please.

Occam’s razor is not applicable if it demands that evidence be blatently ignored in order to satisfy a simplistic and naive worldview.

I didn’t mean it as an insult (and sorry if it came off that way), but you seem to think that just become some people have overcome difficulties without outside help, that everyone else should be expected to do the same thing. That’s not how the real world works.

208

I don’t know how I can be any more clear. I do not want lazy people to get gastric bypass surgery on my dime when they are not willing to put in the work to try and lose the weight themselves. How’s that?

Talking to you about obesity is like banging my head against a brick wall. I don’t know how you can think I haven’t been reading your posts when I’ve responded to each and every point you’ve made.

Perhaps people have read your points and have decided that you are wrong.

I suppose each obese person would need a personal trainer. Someone to help them design an exercise program and diet and to make sure they stick with it. I, however, am not willing to pay for that when they could go to a bookstore and buy a book. But neither is going to work unless they work for it.

You said, “Believe it or not, for some people those issues are huge. Insurmountable, even.” Sounds like an excuse to me.

Which evidence is that? That a large portion of Baby Boomers and Gen Xers have suddenly developed a fat gene or major thyroid problems? Occam’s Razor says that “…one should not make more assumptions than the minimum needed.” Seems to me you are making a few extra assumptions, like there must be something medically wrong with these people so that they can’t lose weight like a normal person.

I have taken great pains to specifically say that what works for one won’t work for another. Feel free to reread the second paragraph of post #196. And the fact that you keep accusing me of generalizing is piss poor debating skills on your part.

I think you and I are going to have to agree to disagree, since I really don’t feel like repeating myself again.

209

That’s fine, and I agree. What has been asserted time and again in this thread is that not every case is due entirely to laziness. This has been shown to my satisfaction. Obviously you are not buying it yourself.

Except one, which is to follow.

And some have agreed whole heartedly. On the flipside for you.

I’ll say it again: At the hospital where I work (currently in bariatric surgery), every candidate has to undergo both psychological and nutritional couselling. Many, in fact most, will have five years of office visits before a surgeon will agree to do the surgery. They will only do it if they have determined that there is absolutely no other way. The surgeons do not undertake this lightly. They explore every avenue before they even consider the first cut.

I am quite sure that the prospective patients are made to read literature, and not some get-thin-quick book that clutters the self-help section of a bookstore. You seem to think you know best about what people need, but trust me, there are surgeons way ahead of you on this.

Insurmountable odds are excuses? Since when?

Yes, but the minimum needed should include the evidence. You seem to want to discard all that doesn’t fit your own narrow view.

Also, I’ve found that Occam’s Razor works well in a number of fields, but the human psyche is not one of them. It is ill-suited to the richness and complexity of the human condition.

Not an assumption at all. There is a body of evidence that trauma, PTSD, rape, and other psychological factors can prevent healthy weight loss. The SF-12 form alone consists of many questions concerning the patient’s mental well-being, in part to determine if there may be other factors contributing to obesity. This alone suggests that it’s not mere laziness on the part of the patient.

Not at all. Yes, you have taken great pains to specifically say that what works for one won’t work for another, but then you come right back to boiling it down to laziness.

Look, I agree that there are some people, maybe even a majority, that are simply lazy. But it should be clear that there are quite a few cases where this is simply not the whole story. Example after example has been given.

Even in cases where laziness may have been the primary cause, there may be medical reasons why surgery is the best solution. I hardly think that you are the person to make that decision.

One more thing: In all of the cases I have seen, Medicare did not pay. It was always private insurance. Medicare, as I understand it, picks up the slack where others fail. And they take a very dim view of fraud. So you and your wallet can relax.

Sounds good to me.

210

Even so you can say that about most illnesses. AIDS, cancer and most illnesses people see a primary physician over are a result of poor lifestyle choices like a high stress lifestyle, poor diet, no exercise, exposure to toxins and lack of use of screening and regular health checkups. You can even say that about things like crime. People who choose to not go to college and get higher paying jobs and who are stuck in the ghetto ‘choose’ to become murder victims. This is all in a way true because the individual can change his fate and his situation The only difference is the obese are treated like their situation, just because they have control over it, is 100% under their control. Maybe obese people are treated differently becaues obesity is always reversible. Once you get AIDS you are stuck with it but obesity can always be reversed. Evenso, its no different than other illnesses. Most illnesses are largely/partly due to factors under the individuals control.

211

Coldfire, I’m not trying to be a jerk, but I don’t think your experience really speaks for most people out there who are obese. It’s easy to lose weight the first time, whether you go on a “crash diet” or just make small modifications and include exercise.

Unfortunately, the first diet usually is a drastic measure that a person can’t maintain for the rest of their lives. Usually the person is not very educated on the first diet. Maybe they read a book by a layperson who lost weight. In any case, when the first weight loss attempt is unrealistic, uninformed and extreme, it’s doomed to fail in most cases.

Here’s a story about a very slim child (yeah, it’s me but I prefer to speak of someone else) who didn’t have to worry about her compulsive eating…didn’t even know she was eating compulsively because she stayed thin. She didn’t get to have the same foods her friends were having for dinner, like pork chops. It was a feast the next few days after mom got paid, but the food availability waned until there was only spaghetti or rice with margerine or (yum) a mayonnaise sandwich. Perhaps that, coupled with other issues, is why she developed an urgent need to eat.

Until she (I guess) got to the place where hormones change your body.

Then she dieted when she was a size 7 because her big sister commented on how much weight she’d gained since the last time she saw her. That hurts to a girl already self-conscious about her newly-formed (may I say, large) breasts. The weight came off easy that time!

Her life changed when she went to college and she forgot about the stringent routine, before she knew it, she packed on more weight than before she dieted. The next time, it was a little harder, and so on and so forth. After 10 diets and going through a variety of eating disorders she settled upon compulsive eating again. She spent 2 years in therapy, she spent a year or so trying to learn what hunger actually felt like. She has been exercising regularly for 1-1/2 years (not including the intermittent exercise during the euphoric initial stages of weight loss).

Finally, she ended up obese, but very muscular. Hell, she moves her own furniture around, and quite frequently, too, because she has a drive to improve her space. She is not eating compulsively 68% of the time (but is compulsively keeping track of how often) and expects to improve. She’s still overweight. She’s not giving up yet, but after so many years of succeeding and failing, she’s tired of the cycling. She’d rather just be fat, try to eat right (maybe not succeeding 100% of the time), and make sure she exercises. She has no serious health problems, but diabetes runs in her family so she’s worried about that.

It’s taken her a long time to get out of the diet mentality and get in touch with her hunger, get in touch with her emotions, and remove the association of exercise with trying to lose weight. There is no way she’s dieting again, but she will exercise and do her best and if she is lucky, she’ll become slim again. Hopefully, people who don’t know what she’s been through will not pass judgement on her at one glance. But they will, and it only contributes to the way she feels about herself because she is fat. She tries like hell not to let it affect her decisions, or derail her from what she’s trying to do.

Have some compassion, critical folks. In a way, my self-indulgent post IS defending myself. Because when people say that “fat people are lazy” and what have you, it hurts. Someone here said they’d never say mean things to fat people’s faces, but you know, if you say it on the boards, you’re talking to some fat people. And you’re adding to the way they feel about feeling fat. And you’re certainly not inspriring them to go out and “just lose the weight”!

I think my struggle is pretty typical of many fat people today, with variants. Despite the fact that I’m “lazy” because I’m fat, I am quite a productive person…more productive than many thin people I know, actually (NOT a slam on thin people…there are lazy thin people, there are lazy fat people).

My hope is that any “classification” that obesity gets will go into research to help us understand it better. Because we don’t know all the answers today. It’s way more complex than any of us can imagine.

Peace.

212

Your comments above have all been addressed in this thread, NUMEROUS times.

The part about your aunt being a person who can’t or won’t do the proper things for her own health have been addressed too. What part of “obesity is being considered for the status of illness” makes you think that it’s another way for 'fatties" to try and “get out of” losing weight?

Again, the whole IDEA of this move is so that the problem can be addressed and hopefully we can start making some headway on it.

Also, regarding your comment ““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?)” has been addressed again and again, in this, and other threads.

Yes, sweetheart, it can take a person, especially an obese person 2 or more months to show any OUTWARD (significant loss on scale and inches) results for all of their work and dieting. It’s very easy to see how a person (and read tdn’s post on how he feels about going to the gym), would feel defeated and as if “nothing works” after a few months of being hungry and deprived and working out hard and having “nothing” to show for it.

I can’t believe you worked at a gym or were a personal trainer. It’s not all just showing them the weights and setting up their diets. It’s also educating them (as I’m hoping/guessing you did with Jeannie), as to how weight loss, metabolism, how different things work for different people and so on.

And again, for the zillionth time, are there going to still be people who want to use excuses and stay fat no matter what? Or are there people who are going to say “I’m happy the way I am, don’t worry about it”?

Of course. No one’s arguing that those people exist. But to approach the problem of obesity like the serious issue it is, has a good chance of working a whole lot better than what folks have been doing to them in the past.

In other words, the “you eat like a pig, go for a walk willya” has been working SO well for us hasn’t it?

213

Really? And you were a trainer? You wouldn’t then, at that point in their training (or hopefully before) explain to them about how it can take a long time for observable results to be apparent? You wouldn’t encourage them past this point? This is exactly the point that some of us have been unable to get past the void. That of, for a LOT of people those without access to trainers such as you and I (or that you’re SUPPOSED to be), that is exactly the sort of education and know how they lack!!! And that’s likely an important part of helping them with their problem, whether we call it an illness, or a condition or whatever you like best.

I’ve mentioned my disagreement with this mentality in several posts, but so far no one has answered it. So WHAT if part of your taxes go to govt funded gastric bypass???

Since when have we Americans EVER had a say in where the taxes they take out of OUR specific paychecks go?? Aren’t you just as annoyed at the example I’ve presented? That of idiotic and inexperienced thrill seekers who climb halfway up Mt. McKinley, get trapped and snowed in, run out of food, suffer from frostbite and hypothermia and eventually have to be rescued on the Govt dime?

If not, WHY not? Because they look good while their practicing their addiction?

We don’t now, and have NEVER had a choice as to where our tax dollars end up. The govt adds and takes away new programs all the time, our tax dollars go to pay for them. It’s not as if they’re going to have a special bariatric tax that comes directly out of your paycheck.

Yes, ad nauseum, You dislike and have no patience with the obese who refuse to use the proper avenues to lose weight, and then whine that they can’t lose weight.

So? How is the CDC’s decision (or whoever it was, I’ve forgotten now after 5 pages) to make this problem enough of a priority to define it as an illness, (hopefully resulting in some PROGRESS in this area), in any way supporting obese people’s right to do that which you find so repugnant?

214

Amen, brother.

I am not obligated to pay anyone else’s healthcare bill. If a person wants to be fat, for example – and millions do, apparently – then let him or her pay. After all, it was their choice to become fat. And as with all personal choices, they must reap what they sow.

215

No worries, I don’t think you’re a jerk for saying that. I’m pretty sure my experience doesn’t equate with most cases of people who are obese, if only for the simple reason that I (in terms of BMI) only qualify as “overweight”.

Then again, let me try to not be a jerk, too. :wink:
Maybe your story isn’t indicative of all people who are obese, either. Don’t get me wrong: I believe your story 100%, and I do feel for you, but I don’t think most obese people spend 2 years in therapy trying to deal with their weight. And I’ll go you one further - a lot of obese people who want to lose weight would have done better to reverse the trend sooner, when they were just overweight. I know, that sounds unbelievably smug from someone who never was obese, and who just lost 7 kilos in 2 months with relative ease. But to me, it IS all about taking control, and trying to make a change before it’s too late. I don’t want to paint you in a bad light, HOMS, but I honestly believe that if I would approach my weight problem in such a… I don’t know, psychological way? …as I see a lot of people do here, I wouldn’t be able to lose weight either. What works -at least for me- is rationalising it. It’s a physical problem you can solve with your own body. Don’t psycho-babble the problem into understandable euphemisms - that doesn’t work. I know, I used to do it. At the end of the day, what matters is getting my ass to the gym, and counting my calories all day long.

I don’t want to come across as judgmental. I AM not judgmental. But I am skeptical of a lot of people’s reasons for being overweight. Individually, sure, there are mitigating circumstances that can render my rational approach above moot - and perhaps indeed HOMS’s story is one with such circumstances. But it can’t apply to a whole country.

216

Coldfire: I highly suspect a lot of obese people also suffer from depression. Assuming this to be true, is obesity brought upon by depression, or is depression brought upon by obesity?

217

I don’t know, but I suspect that would vary per case, right?

I guess my point is that no matter what came first, if you focus on the physical aspect and get results, it might break the vicious cycle. And yes, that’s probably a simplistic approach bound to only work in some cases. What can I say, I’m a simple man. :slight_smile:

218

Coldfire, I think there are a lot more people who really try to diet and exercise to lose weight. They go up and down the scale. I think most people do approach weight loss from the “formula”. I know I did…many times, when I was old enough to understand it. It was only the last time, when I got sick of yo-yoing back and forth, that I decided to seek psychological help.

You simply can’t judge how hard a person has tried by knowing them for a short while and not knowing their entire story.

I’ve also seen only one person lose the weight and keep it off (for a year, anyway, and I don’t think he’s gained it back). I know way more people who have put themselves through dieting time and time again. These people don’t have willpower and are lazy? Bah. Why do they keep going after it time and time again?

My point is that it is so much more complex than we know, and different for each person. For some, your approach from a physical standpoint will work. For more people, it will work for a while. And for most it will work again, and again, less effective each time.

219

Well, like I said, the last thing I want to sound like is judgmental.

But why do most people gain the weight back again? If you succeed at losing weight, you can keep it off by continuing to work out, and continuing to watch your diet. I think a lot of people are very hard on themselves throughout their diets, and then go, “Right, so I’ve lost that 40 pounds now. Goal accomplished!”, and they lapse to their old eating and workout habits, pre-diet.

If you’re an adult with a propensity for weight gain, you will have to work hard for the rest of your life to keep the pounds off. I guess that’s what I’m looking at, too. So be it. It’s either that, or weighing 150 kilos in 10 years time.

220

My little brother is 6’1" and a solid 240 without an ounce of fat on him. His boss asked him one day what he was doing after work, and he replied that he was going to the gym. His boss looked stunned. “Why? Look at you, you don’t need to work out!”

My brother responded, “If I didn’t work out, I wouldn’t look like this.”

Like I said, it’s a lifestyle change that most overweight people need to make. They need to learn to eat better and to incorporate some sort of physical activity into their life. Generally speaking, anyone who says they don’t have time to workout just isn’t trying hard enough. A lot of people would make a significant change in their waistline if they would just wake up 20 minutes earlier and go for a short walk in the morning.