Do we, though? If an anorexic person doesn’t want to get help and they’re over 18, can we really force them?
Plus I don’t think this is a fair comparison. Anorexia nervosa is by definition a mental health condition, b/c the person is trying to lose weight. Obesity may be linked to a mental condition but isn’t necessarily. Comparing extreme thinness to obesity might make more sense. After all, not all extremely thin people are that way due to anorexia. Similarly, not all obese people are that way due to a mental issue.
The MAIN reason is ingesting less calories than you burn. There are only three ways to accomplish this without sucking fat out through a tube.
Ingest less. Examples would be eating less, or absorbing less (bypass surgery).
Burn More. Examples would be exercise or consuming a drug like ephedrine.
Combine #1 or #2
#1 or #2 or #3 will all result in weight loss. This is physics and settled science. Which method is more effective for a particular individual is the ONLY question outstanding.
Ok, so you are supporting my original thought that exercise was not the main reason. We are in argreement then. Try2b’s assertion is different from this.
I don’t agree with your interpretation of the argument, or your use of the word straw man in this situation. You said that the main driven of weight loss is the difference in calories burned verses those taken in, of which diet plays a significant part.
I am unable to understand your line of reasoning, it is probably better we just move on.
See there you did it again!!! You don’t see how that is a “sham argument set up to be defeated.”
First you set up a “false dilemma” where the bar is set to ‘THE MAIN DRIVER’ So that you can dismiss any argument that says “the most significant” or “the two most significant” etc…
Then infer that the body of scientific knowledge and consensus is on your side of the argument, which YOU set up here:
While failing to provide a SINGLE cite of your own you infer your position is scientifically accepted. Without a cite your claim can be flushed away as anecdote too.
Yet you still claim you didn’t just build up an argument that would be easy to tear down while ignoring the other persons actual arguments?
I think I’ll let you opine here and I’ll head out into the big blue room.
I am not trying to get into an argument, I was just stating an opinion. I am not an expert on weight loss, I just thought the idea that poster was overemphasizing the importance of exercise in his or her analysis.
Since I am not inclined to get into a heavy debate on the issue, I am not really motivated to provide cites - I am not trying to win a debate here.
Recently there was a thread about how diet was very important to weight loss - I found the the evidence very compelling. If you have a scientific study that says most of the weight gain in the population is due to lack of exercise and not an increase in calories, share it with me and I will read it. If it is a good article I will thank you for it.
Again, I am not an expert, I am not trying to have a debate. I appreciate having a conversation with someone who has a different opinion than me, but I don’t think the tangents of picking apart what I’m saying and inferring that I’m using some sort of debate tricks and tactics is really very interesting.
And I think I brought up exercise, and I wasn’t even talking about weight loss. I was talking about factors that lead to weight gain. I believe an important reason so many Americans are overweight is that we don’t need to move much in our daily lives, and our appetites aren’t really well calibrated to a sedentary life style. Because, recent condition, not something we evolved for.
That doesn’t mean people can’t maintain whatever weight they want if they are willing to work at it, but it does mean that for many, a healthy weight requires active management. if you just putter along without paying attention to your weight, you will likely gain some. And i think THAT is mostly because we don’t need to exercise much in our daily lives.
In contrast, people who exercise much more than historical (or prehistorical) norms often have to think about diet to make sure they eat enough.
Since I believe it has been clearly established that there is no effective mental health treatment for obesity, what is left to debate in the OP? Treating obese people first as if they had a mental disorder would not be effective in reducing obesity rates and would increase overall societal medical costs (mental health care not being free.) So what is left? Do we simply have a great desire to label obese people as “mntally ill”? We clearly already feel comfortable calling them “irrational” as if avoiding long term societal costs were the only meaningful measure of rationality.
Often when I see these kind of discussions I wonder just how narrow a view of “rational” some folks can have. Is every risk irrational? Should we label everyone who chooses to not worship an actuarial table mentally deficient? Is the only measure of value in a life how many breaths one manage to take? Or how little money is required to sustain one until death (and do only medical costs count in the equation?)
For the record, I am against adding an additinoal label to overweight people or driving obese people into a course of treatment that has no demonstrable value.
Why post in “Great Debates” if you have no desire to debate? There is a forum on this site called “In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)” if you want to make baseless claims that won’t be challenged.
One problem is that eating is essential to continuing to live, and in the distant past those who were most motivated to keep eating (hungriest) and who best stored up plenty to carry them over times of famine (fattest) survived best and left the most offspring.
Fast-forward to present times, when the biggest problem is an overabundance of food.
Part of the problem is genetic programming common to ALL humans that encourages us to eat, and to specifically eat foods that historically were in short supply - fatty, salty, sugary. It’s somewhat like using psychotherapy to convince people to get by on only 3 hours of sleep a night - the average person is not going to be successful at that.
Medications that alter food craving, digestion, and absorption all have potentially adverse side effects.
So does surgery.
You’re trying to battle some of our basic biology, it shouldn’t be surprising this is hard to do.
Are you seriously claiming there is no effective treatment for depression or anxiety or compulsive behaviors?
By this standard there is no effective treatment for death but I will still go to the doctor when I get sick. Death, like obesity is a symptom and an outcome of many potential causes.
The issue with the original premise is that there are may causes that may lead to obesity, some of which may be related to mental health but many others which are not.
I think the main issue is that there is opacity as to if any mental health treatment in this country is evidence-based vs. placebo and or woo. This is even true outside of drugs, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has been clinically proven to be effective in treating depression and there is a study that just concluded that may show it works for BED.
So please provide a cite for your claim that: “Since I believe it has been clearly established that there is no effective mental health treatment for obesity”
That’s a fair point. The title sounds like a typical IMHO type of thread, but I forgot to double check which forum I was in before I posted - I don’t usually come here.
Just for the record though, I wish someone would be able to show me that exercise will help me lose weight more than dieting - I tend to stress eat. I get stressed out about something and I just get an insatiable appetite for the greasiest, fattiest food I can find. I should probably lose 20-30 pounds and I’d rather exercise than change my diet, but the “BBC diet” thread has me convinced I can’t just exercise the calories away. Ugh.
As I’ve frequently mentioned on this board, I was able to successfully resolve a 30 year severe weight problem through therapy, including CBT. My initial reaction to my success was to think that everyone who has a weight problem should go to therapy and get healthy.
But over time I’ve realized that there is no one solution for everyone, including therapy. Some people have a problem knowing the right things to eat. Some have physical problems causing weight issues. And some have mental or emotional issues, but are unable to resolve them through therapy.
I do think that there is a definite place for therapy in the treatment of obesity. When people ask me how I was able to go from a life of obesity and constant yo-yo dieting to a stable, healthy weight, I tell them that therapy worked for me. The quote below is a perfect example of a case where therapy is worth a try.
It seems to me that if you know that stress is causing you to have an insatiable appetite, you might want to look into therapy to deal with your stress in a healthier way. Wouldn’t getting rid of the need to eat unhealthy food be even more effective than exercising the excess away? I can’t say that this approach will work for anyone else; I just know that it worked pretty spectacularly for me.
Sorry, didn’t mean to start a spat. But really, does anyone dispute that having kids makes some women gain weight, and that lots of athletes are really fit?
I will not give you advice as I am not a licensed practitioner but cognitive behavioral therapy is evidenced based and has been demonstrated to help with anxiety. Research also shows that as little as 30 minutes of exercise three to five times a week can provide significant anxiety relief. To achieve the maximum benefit required at least an hour of aerobic exercise on most days.
So in theory for a person who is an anxiety eater a practitioner would use CBT to help identify those feelings before they grow and lead to the unhelpful behavior of eating as a response. One possible technique would be to identify the start of anxiety and quickly walk around the block or some other activity.
Clinical trials have shown that CBT can be as effective or more effective than medication for anxiety.
But to be clear, when people say “diets” they tend to be talking about short term changes which are good at losing weight quickly. These tend to always fail and are not effective for obesity. Changes to diet and exercise, in the meaning of long term small changes that are sustainable are what you need to do to have long term weight loss. Those processes are slow and easy to abandon because it is just human nature to want results now.
IHMO the original post should have been “Should obesity concurrently trigger an evaluation for possible mental and medical health issues.” I would say yes, if it has a negative impact on the individuals life. But there is a huge stigma against mental health in this country and the world so lots of people suffer just to avoid that stigma.
The fact that placebo type treatments like talk therapy dominate the market also discourages people from seeking evidence based treatment and leads to the common mis-perception that was expressed in this thread. That there is no use in seeking mental health treatment for obesity.
I can’t say for sure which is more important in your case, sounds like you have a big source of “emo calories”. But exercise can definitely play the bigger role if you make it. I’ll cite Michael Phelps, the Olympic swimming champion.
The dude eats 4x the calories of an ordinary adult, and is fit as can be.
Maybe; but I have a decent amount of self control so I think I will be Ok. My stress levels are not out of the ordinary from what I can tell, just the normal stress of life If therapy can eliminate the normal stress of life without making me go and pay someone to sit in a chair for the next 20 years maybe I’d give it a try - it worked wonders for my sister but she had much different issues; and much higher stress.
Really I just want to have my cake (or in my case a bucket of KFC followed by a trip to Krispy Creme) and eat it too. The weight gain is a relatively new thing, so I’ll try diet and exercise first. If that fails, I’ll look into other things.
No. Are you seriously unable to read the words you have quoted? Or do you think that all obesity is caused by anxiety disorders or compulsive behaviors?
How exactly would you expect em to provide a cite for the lack of something? Perhaps you would be so kind as to post alink to what you believe is an effective mental health treatment for obesity (not anxiety, not depression, not BED, not any other thing that you feel is correlated to some percentage of obese populations).