Saintguine
Member
It's not a disease, it's the result of a poor lifestyle. No pathogens are involved, it is simply the natural process that unused carbohydrates, proteins, lipids etc. get converted into adipose tissue.
Obesity as a Disease
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Winterfang
Banned
Obese people look different than fat people of the same size. They also had a faint rotten smell to them because of the health problems. It's a disease in my opinion.
Obesity isn't a disease.
Metabolic syndrome is a disease.
There are populations of obese people who have normal levels of visceral fat, do not suffer from metabolic syndrome and will lead normal healthy lives like any other healthy section of the population, except that they have a larger percentage of subcutaneous fat than the average person. If you want to proffer a hypothesis that obesity is a disease, you have to account for these people as well.
There are populations of normal weight people who suffer from metabolic syndrome, have elevated levels of visceral fat, have elevated LDL, are at risk for gout, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
People are putting too much emphasis on subcutaneous fat. It might not look nice, but it's not always a reliable indicator of disease.
Metabolic syndrome is a disease.
There are populations of obese people who have normal levels of visceral fat, do not suffer from metabolic syndrome and will lead normal healthy lives like any other healthy section of the population, except that they have a larger percentage of subcutaneous fat than the average person. If you want to proffer a hypothesis that obesity is a disease, you have to account for these people as well.
There are populations of normal weight people who suffer from metabolic syndrome, have elevated levels of visceral fat, have elevated LDL, are at risk for gout, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
People are putting too much emphasis on subcutaneous fat. It might not look nice, but it's not always a reliable indicator of disease.
There are plenty of diseases not caused by pathogens.
Zoe
Member
Uh... no.
I think calling obesity a disease across the board is comforting for people because it implies that their health issues aren't entirely of their own choosing. In reality though, calling it a "disease" does nothing to change the reality of their situation, nor does it nullify the poor lifestyle decisions that got them to that point.
Are there people out there who do have real metabolic problems that leads to their obesity? Of course there are, but I'd be willing to bet that 95% of the obese people I've seen in my life don't fall under that self-comforting umbrella.
Are there people out there who do have real metabolic problems that leads to their obesity? Of course there are, but I'd be willing to bet that 95% of the obese people I've seen in my life don't fall under that self-comforting umbrella.
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
Who would fit this description and still have as much fat on them to be considered "obese" by most people? Maybe sumo wrestlers?
No, I'm not sure what the health outcomes for most sumo wrestlers are....but 20% of all obese people are healthy, are not at risk of developing type 2 diabetes and will go on living healthy normal lives. They're just fat.
The kicker is, 40-70% of normal weight non-obese people DO suffer from metabolic syndrome. That's right, 40-70% of normal weight people are currently suffering from metabolic syndrome and ARE at elevated risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease, they're just blind to it.......7/8ths of people with type 2 diabetes don't even know they have it.
Is there any evidence for this?
Keavy_Rain
Member
I've been trying, and failing, to lose weight for most of my life. The reason why I kept failing isn't because I'm lazy. It's because I wasn't wiling to face the reason why I was overweight to begin with.
My weight problem started in the third grade. I grew a foot taller than anyone in the class and was bulled because of it. Schools, as we're all aware, are not able to properly handle bullying or the victims of bullying, and I did what a lot of bullied kids do: I did my best to stay away from everyone and used food as comfort. It's only until just recently I've been able to admit that.
My weight gain only made things worse in terms of bullying and this caused me to eat more and hide more. Slowly I began to withdraw into myself, to the point where I went from a friendly extrovert to a bitter introvert. I would read books like "I Am Legend" and imagine how much better my life would be if I could be the last human alive.
In high school, I tried to lose weight, but the bullies were there to make fun of me for sweating, breathing heavily, and "Smelling like shit" as I walked the path around the football field. Add to this the cruelest creature on the face of the earth, the "Teenage girl" and I not only gave up on ever losing weight but I withdrew into myself so deeply that it's taken 20 years for me to reach the point where I was before.
After high school I found work kept me quite busy, but I was never really happy and would turn to my old friend comfort foods to make things better. It was also around this time I discovered the film "Fight Club" and the band "Manowar." Seeing Brad Pitt's toned frame on film and the muscle-defined caricatures of Manowar made me want that body more than anything.
I knew it would be a lot of hard work, but it felt like no matter what I did or how hard I worked out my body never toned and I never saw the rippling muscles I wanted. The taunts and bullying ran through my head, convincing me I was a failure, which led to comfort food and more weight gain.
The "try to lose weight, not succeed fast enough, get upset, and eat" cycle continued and I soon tried various diets. Atkins, Slim-fast, South Beach, Joe Cross' juice diet, I tried them all and failed at every one of them because they made me miserable.
Two years ago I sought medical help to lose weight and found a doctor who was willing to help. Unfortunately, he was transferred to another hospital outside of my area before we could work out a plan and his replacement was one of those "It's your fault you're failing" types who believed anything I said about being miserable or being in pain was an excuse, and I believed him...which led me to more comfort foods, more failure, more disappointment, and more comfort foods.
It was late last year that I suffered a nervous breakdown. It was almost like it was menat to be because that same week my regular doctor was out on vacation and another doctor was filling in for him. My new doctor's medical assistant warned me he was running a bit late because "The patient before you needed some extra time." I asked her if this was normal and she said "Well, kinda. I mean, he cares a lot about his patients and will give you all the time you need."
When the doctor came into the room the first thing he asked me is how long I've been holding it all in. I was totally and completely honest with him about everything and how I felt bad that my back pain, caused from a fall in the shower (I was working 60 hours a week to impress my new employer and fell asleep standing in the shower, shocked myself when I woke up, slipped, and my lower back hit the edge of the tub) combined with my mental health issues, seasonal allergies, and comfort food addiction were holding me back from losing weight. He said my weight is an issue, but my bloodwork and vitals seem OK, so he decided that we'd focus on getting my mental health and allergies under control first, then get me into physical therapy to see what could be done about reducing and managing that back pain, then (and only then) we'd consult a dietician and get a workout plan going.
So I'm a few months into my drug and counseling therapy for my mental health issues and, after some experimentation we found the right drug combo and dosages needed to get my allergies under control. My psychologist is taking her part slow because "We've got three decades of emotional garbage to clean up" and she (along with my GP) feel that helping me develop healthy coping skills for emotional pain and stress are vital to any long-term weight loss success.
Once my psychologist feels comfortable dropping down to bi-weekly sessions I'll start my physical therapy program to help me learn how to exercise without making my back worse and we'll bring the dietician into the fold after that. My doctor wants Christmastime to be our best-case scenario goal, but has said repeatedly that we'll take as long as we need with each step along the way and pushing the goal back isn't failure. It just means we miscalculated.
Overall, I find I'm much happier and my family, friends, and co-workers have all noticed a huge positive change in my behavior and attitude.
My weight problem started in the third grade. I grew a foot taller than anyone in the class and was bulled because of it. Schools, as we're all aware, are not able to properly handle bullying or the victims of bullying, and I did what a lot of bullied kids do: I did my best to stay away from everyone and used food as comfort. It's only until just recently I've been able to admit that.
My weight gain only made things worse in terms of bullying and this caused me to eat more and hide more. Slowly I began to withdraw into myself, to the point where I went from a friendly extrovert to a bitter introvert. I would read books like "I Am Legend" and imagine how much better my life would be if I could be the last human alive.
In high school, I tried to lose weight, but the bullies were there to make fun of me for sweating, breathing heavily, and "Smelling like shit" as I walked the path around the football field. Add to this the cruelest creature on the face of the earth, the "Teenage girl" and I not only gave up on ever losing weight but I withdrew into myself so deeply that it's taken 20 years for me to reach the point where I was before.
After high school I found work kept me quite busy, but I was never really happy and would turn to my old friend comfort foods to make things better. It was also around this time I discovered the film "Fight Club" and the band "Manowar." Seeing Brad Pitt's toned frame on film and the muscle-defined caricatures of Manowar made me want that body more than anything.
I knew it would be a lot of hard work, but it felt like no matter what I did or how hard I worked out my body never toned and I never saw the rippling muscles I wanted. The taunts and bullying ran through my head, convincing me I was a failure, which led to comfort food and more weight gain.
The "try to lose weight, not succeed fast enough, get upset, and eat" cycle continued and I soon tried various diets. Atkins, Slim-fast, South Beach, Joe Cross' juice diet, I tried them all and failed at every one of them because they made me miserable.
Two years ago I sought medical help to lose weight and found a doctor who was willing to help. Unfortunately, he was transferred to another hospital outside of my area before we could work out a plan and his replacement was one of those "It's your fault you're failing" types who believed anything I said about being miserable or being in pain was an excuse, and I believed him...which led me to more comfort foods, more failure, more disappointment, and more comfort foods.
It was late last year that I suffered a nervous breakdown. It was almost like it was menat to be because that same week my regular doctor was out on vacation and another doctor was filling in for him. My new doctor's medical assistant warned me he was running a bit late because "The patient before you needed some extra time." I asked her if this was normal and she said "Well, kinda. I mean, he cares a lot about his patients and will give you all the time you need."
When the doctor came into the room the first thing he asked me is how long I've been holding it all in. I was totally and completely honest with him about everything and how I felt bad that my back pain, caused from a fall in the shower (I was working 60 hours a week to impress my new employer and fell asleep standing in the shower, shocked myself when I woke up, slipped, and my lower back hit the edge of the tub) combined with my mental health issues, seasonal allergies, and comfort food addiction were holding me back from losing weight. He said my weight is an issue, but my bloodwork and vitals seem OK, so he decided that we'd focus on getting my mental health and allergies under control first, then get me into physical therapy to see what could be done about reducing and managing that back pain, then (and only then) we'd consult a dietician and get a workout plan going.
So I'm a few months into my drug and counseling therapy for my mental health issues and, after some experimentation we found the right drug combo and dosages needed to get my allergies under control. My psychologist is taking her part slow because "We've got three decades of emotional garbage to clean up" and she (along with my GP) feel that helping me develop healthy coping skills for emotional pain and stress are vital to any long-term weight loss success.
Once my psychologist feels comfortable dropping down to bi-weekly sessions I'll start my physical therapy program to help me learn how to exercise without making my back worse and we'll bring the dietician into the fold after that. My doctor wants Christmastime to be our best-case scenario goal, but has said repeatedly that we'll take as long as we need with each step along the way and pushing the goal back isn't failure. It just means we miscalculated.
Overall, I find I'm much happier and my family, friends, and co-workers have all noticed a huge positive change in my behavior and attitude.
Obesity is a disease. Becoming obese is (in many cases, but not all) the result of a poor lifestyle. What's so hard to understand?
Here's Wikipedia's definition of disease:
The vast majority of throat cancer patients are smokers. Would you call that just "the result of a poor lifestyle"?
Throat cancer is most of the time really the result of smoking. Which is a (terrible) lifestyle choice in itself. Doesn't mean that it's not a disease. It is. Still noone forced those people to smoke and drink alcohol and it's known for ages that both of those things are terri-bad for your health.
Source? 70% of normal weight people would be insane. The major risk factors are dietary related and lack of physical activity. Not being fat doesn't mean no chance of getting diabetes. But the chances are way lower.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolic_syndrome
Which of course includes obese and high weight people.
And then there is:
Just finished reading through the thread. This post describes my experiences pretty well. While not as extreme as whaty ou went through. my over eating was absolutely a caused by bullying and my self reliance on comfort eating to deal with it, like you i withdrew into myself ( at my worst I spent 3 months in front of my PC rarely leaving the house ). Things slowly improved for me over time, most noticeably going to uni and not being around people that constantly put me down. I worked at a really cool place for a year as part of my sandwich course and that really boosted up my happiness levels and got me out of what I think was mild depression. From there I am slowly turning my weight around (lost 40 lbs so far but have another 20-30 to go before I'll be happier with myself).
Seriously my weight has been intrinsicly linked with my self-worth and happiness. I'm willing to bet this is the same for many obese people.
bengraven
Member
This.
And I'm up for this as long as it helps those who can't get help for themselves.
Imagine having a disease that seems like only hucksters want to cure and everyone mocks you for and it affects your life, but no one seems to care.
I think if there is glucose in the mother's bloodstream it'll be transported to the baby.
This is like the old moral dylema:
We are not truthly free, yet it is best for us if we act as if we were.
Obesity might be a disease, but it will be better for us if we don't treat it as such.
There are certain "lies" that are far more useful for us humans than the truth. Specially when said truth validates our path of lesser effort.
That being said, from my own personal experience and the ones of the people around me, obesity tends to be more a symtom of an underlying psychological disorder. We get stressed out, and in response, some of us eat far more than we should, and we feel starving when we should not. Remember that for our bodies, the response to being treathened is to enter into "saving fat for the future famines" mode. Add a a genetic tendence andsedentary lifestyle to that, et voilá, obesity.
We are not truthly free, yet it is best for us if we act as if we were.
Obesity might be a disease, but it will be better for us if we don't treat it as such.
There are certain "lies" that are far more useful for us humans than the truth. Specially when said truth validates our path of lesser effort.
That being said, from my own personal experience and the ones of the people around me, obesity tends to be more a symtom of an underlying psychological disorder. We get stressed out, and in response, some of us eat far more than we should, and we feel starving when we should not. Remember that for our bodies, the response to being treathened is to enter into "saving fat for the future famines" mode. Add a a genetic tendence andsedentary lifestyle to that, et voilá, obesity.
modernlifeisANDY
Member
I am by no means obese - I'm at the high end of the healthy weight category for BMI - but I can still recognize the bad habits I have. It's the whole "fatlogic" thing - "oh, I did this so I deserve this." It is difficult to escape.
I also found this interesting: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/25/4/997.abstract
I also found this interesting: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/25/4/997.abstract
Just like Gum Disease is something that happens to you, it's not a result of your poor dental hygiene. CHD & diabetes aren't a result of your poor diet and lack of exercise they just happen to you. That's how diseases work, right? You choose to take the precautions necessary to protect yourself from disease all the time (I hope you wash those hands!) but that doesn't mean they aren't diseases. Having a say in whether or not you are affected by a disease doesn't disqualify the disease for that classification.
I had replied to another concern like this earlier, but I was describing a train of thought, subconscious or otherwise, that I supposed could be used by the obese subjects in this study who ate more after reading about the AMA's recent designation of obesity as disease. In some fashion the label of obesity as disease gave them the liberty to eat more - and I chose to express their sentiment with that line of thought.
I liked reading through this and seeing you're taking it one step at a time. I've never really been obese, but have struggled off and on with weight as well. The biggest hangup for me in the past was, like you mention, seeing a Brad Pitt or whatnot and getting frustrated at how impossible it seemed to achieve that body type.
What really set things free for me was to first decide that all I was doing was changing what I eat to mostly meat, veggies, fruits, and some dairy and occasionally some rice or tortillas. I'd indulge here and there, but that'd be the majority of what I ate. The other idea was that I would only work out in ways that were fun or felt satisfying. Basketball, sprinting, walking the dog, lifting, even DDR... yes. Endless sessions on the treadmill... no.
When I changed my thinking from "gotta lose this weight!" to "I'm changing these small things in my life", it made a huge difference. No anxiety, stress, or bad feelings anymore. I was just satisfied with eating better food (swear to God, fast food and even most restaurant food is garbage), and feeling better from the endorphins and whatnot released from doing physical activity I enjoyed instead of things I dreaded.
TLDR: Take it one step at a time and don't focus on weight loss as your goal (it'll kill you). Focus on eating better and enjoy being active. The rest falls into place (until you get hardcore and join the GAF Fitness Thread, lol).
Given that I don't have access to the full study it's hard for me to comment on the methodology they used and how they came to their conclusions. The individuals could have reacted to reading about the designation of their condition as a disease with a bout of stress eating, not an uncommon reaction for anyone to stressors in life. Did their increased intake persist over time or did their eating habits return to near the levels of prior to reading about the new designation after a short period? The change in their view of their body image seems like a natural reaction to the change in designation. You shouldn't feel shame that you have diabetes or heart disease so why should they feel worse for being obese?
Dark Octave
Banned
I'm not going to argue if it's a disease or not but If I took this reductionary attitude to describe you as a collection of water and membrane that uses electrical pulses to control your actions, you'd sound very much less than human.
I don't really have an opinion on the matter, but I think it makes no sense when people say that being a disease is just an excuse for being fat. If you find out you have a disease, do you just sit on your ass and complain about it? You don't go see a doctor or try to get better in some other way? What does one thing have to do with the other?
Oh, I'm sure some people will use that as an excuse, just like people who use sex addition as an excuse to cheat on their partners or alcoholism as an excuse to drinking uncontrollably.
But can you truly not see the benefits of classifying it as a disease versus merely a "bad habit" like, say, nose picking? First, it opens the possibility of obesity treatments to be offered by health care, instead of being relegated to cosmetic-land. As a disease, it can also be addressed more efficiently by awareness campaigns, support groups and other initiatives.
Random Painted HIghway
Member
You haven't heard people blame genetics or thyroid or glandular issues and throw up their hands? It's a disease, not my fault!
Actually that happens more often than you think with diseases that have nothing to do with obesity.
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