Is Obesity a Disease or a Moral Failing?
Obesity – being very fat – is a condition that is at the much disputed border between medicine and moral weakness. No one doubts that being very fat is bad for you, that is to say has deleterious consequences as far as pathology and life expectancy are concerned, to say nothing of aesthetics, but is it a disease in itself, and are doctors their patients’ keepers? To this no final answer can be returned, for it lies not in the realm of physic but of metaphysic. One answers as much according to one’s philosophical predilections and presuppositions as to empirical evidence.
Many people take obesity as a mass phenomenon (if I may be allowed a little pun of doubtful taste), not just among the American but among the world population, as evidence that people are not really responsible as individuals for what they put into their mouths, chew, and swallow, but rather victims of something beyond their control. If they are not so responsible, of course, it is rather difficult to see what they are or even might be responsible for. But the impersonal-forces point of view is well expressed in an editorial in a recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine by a public health doctor and an expert in “communication,” by which I suppose is meant advertising and propaganda.
The concern [about the increasing obesity of the population] prompted the recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, “Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention: Solving the Weight of the Nation.” The groundbreaking report and accompanying HBO documentary, “The Weight of the Nation,” present a forceful case that the obesity epidemic has been driven by structural changes in our environment, rather than embrace the reductionist view that the cause is poor decision making by individuals.
There follow in the editorial, as perhaps one might expect, a few paragraphs of managerialese, whose only moral principle is that it is vital not to stigmatise the fat because then they might feel bad about being fat. It is a bad thing, ex hypothesi, to be fat, but apparently an even worse one to feel bad about being fat – a feeling that might, I suppose, lead fat people to eating more Krsipy Kreme doughnuts. Once a certain point is reached, then, people are not fat because they eat, but eat because they are fat. Nietzsche would have found this reversal of causative relationship interesting.
Obesity is largely (forgive me) a matter of poor food choices, but in behalf of fat people everywhere, it’s not entirely our fault. For the last thirty years I ate the recommended “heart-healthy,” low-fat diet, and just kept getting fatter. Finally, in a desperate effort to avoid being prescribed cholesterol-lowering drugs, I tried going low-carbohydrate – and lost twenty of those pounds in a matter of weeks, and am now within seven pounds of my college weight. Many of us have made poor food choices, but those choices were recommended to us by the experts. Now the main expert I pay attention to is Instapundit. Thanks, PJ Media!
Werewife, The low carb diet and new low carb lifestyle worked for me too. I could say,”You are what you don’t eat”.
Check it out, the food pyramid was created by Kellogg in the late 1800′s to promote the health benefits gained from eating corn flakes.
Exactly what he said. It’s all the carbs that are making everyone fat. And they are EVERY WHERE AND IN EVERY THING. (don’t believe me? pull 10 items that you don’t expect to have any carbs out of your kitchen and check the nutrition label) For 50 years the government has been pushing a high carb low fat diet and every year people get fatter and fatter (as a nation). Perhaps, just perhaps, it’s time to try something new. Actually something old as in the way that people ate for 50,000 years beforehand.
Another Gary Taubes success story here. Every day my co-workers see me eating bacon & eggs for breakfast, shake their heads and mutter that I’m killing myself. Meanwhile I’ve lost 20 pounds in 3 months and the guy eating the “healthy” multi-grain bagel just loosened his belt again.
Two entire generations of Americans were raised on nutrition advice that was the exact opposite of what they should have been told. The nutrition advice the government force fed us has caused an epidemic of disease and misery that makes the tobacco industry look like the Salvation Army, but they’ll never be held accountable for it.
Eat like a caveman – meat – fish – fruits – nuts – veggies. Cavemen didn’t have bread, bagels, crackers or pasta because cavemen didn’t have flower, because cavemen didn’t grow wheat.
I have been a dedicated fitness enthusiast ever since the late seventies. Rugby, running, mountain biking, bodybuilding, swimming, crossfit…you name it, I’ve trained for it! Still, for the first 20 years of that lifestyle, I always had borderline cholesterol problems and never could seem to get completely leaned out bodyfat-wise unless I went on near starvation diets, and even then I looked more sickly than fit. It just so happens those were the years of buying into the government recommended low fat, high carbohydrate diet, and ladies and gentlemen, that’s all I ate. That changed in 1995 when I purchased an “underground” book for bodybuilding called, “The Anabolic Diet,” by Mauro Di Pasquale. It recommended eggs, butter, steak, cheese, etc., but very few carbs (except for a weekend carb-load cheat day, where you still kept the fat intake high). For the first time in my life I had stellar blood chemistry results, and lost the last vestiges of stubborn abdominal bodyfat. I’ve moved onto other low carb diets since, like Atkins and more recently the paleo diet, but the results are the same. Reading “Good Calories, Bad Calories” by Gary Taubes finally pulled it altogether from an intellectual point of view. I think a lot of the responsibility for the obesity epidemic lies with our federal government and its institutions and allies on the dole for research grants promoting the low fat, high carb diet. Can you blame me for being skeptical about believing they know what’s best when it comes to other issues, like health care and global warning?
Same here – cut out as many carbs as I can and am down 70 lbs. When I do eat carbs I make sure to get them as unprocessed as possible. Some of us just weren’t born to be carbivores.
Back fifty years ago there were very few fat people. Most adults smoked cigarettes, which are an excellent appetite suppressor. Of course smoking reduces your life span. So does obesity. However a shorter life span means fewer years of collecting Social Security. Less time collecting Medicare. Less likely to live long enough to wind up in a nursing home on Medicaid. It is actually the person who does everything “right” that ends up costing society the most money in total if you sit down and do the math. The difference between those who smoke, overeat in life span is about a decade. Ten years more of collecting Social Security, Medicare, and more likely to live long enough to end one’s life on Medicaid in a nursing home somewhere.
Agreed. My current take on diet is that it all comes down to blood sugar levels and corresponding insulin levels. Look into the diet books about glycemic index/glycemic load. All I have done is cut way back on (not entirely eliminated) starches in my diet (wheat, corn, potatoes, rice) and I have lost about 30 pounds in three months. I never go hungry and I don’t go out of my way to exercise.
Most of what we’ve been told about diet for the last 40 years (avoid fat, avoid red meat, avoid fructose, avoid sodium, starve yourself, exercise your brains out, etc., etc.) has been wrong.
Ditto, Werewife. Some of us are built in such a way that we cannot handle carbohydrates in the vast amounts that are shoveled in our direction. Being an unreconstructed carb addict means one thing above all: always feeling hungry, never feeling full. A spoonful is too much and five gallons is not enough.
Wull that depends on whether it’s a cultural decision or a medical condition.
But just why does that yummy sandwich picture link to amazon for a blu-ray movie disk, is it the name?
I hear an adverisement for “Obesity is a Disease” on Rush’s and Hannity’s radio shows all the time. I shudder at the prospect of likely rise in the cost of health insurance if this ad campaign ssuccessful. Especially if we cannot destroy the monster of Obamacare.
If Obama had repealed the government regulations that make US health care the most expensive in the world, we’d be paying far less for health care. Take prescription laws as an example. To control your high blood pressure and high cholesterol using Walmart generics will cost you from $80 to $120 a year going by my own experience. However, in order to obtain a doctor’s “permission” to purchase these medical drugs (which are as safe as aspirin if taken as directed)will add at least $200 more to your costs. Likely more. So without prescription laws your cost of taking care of your blood pressure and cholesterol would be about $10 a month. But with a doctor in the picture, your costs jump to close to $30 a month. In effect you are paying out $20 a month to purchase “permission” to do something that effects no one but yourself. Of course the medical profession will protest removal of prescription laws because they are for primary care physicians a good portion of their income. Without prescription laws, their waiting rooms would not be as crowded, there would be no “shortage of primary care physicians”, and we’d all save a lot of money. This is why if you like freedom, you need to become a Libertarian. We really believe in personal freedom in everything…
Obesity is a designation on the BMI chart, that is a ratio of height to weight, and not a description of health.
There are healthy fat people, and healthy thin people.
The human body is a wonderful machine that does thousands of amazing things everyday, but if you make someone ashamed of their body, they wont want to take care of it.
If we focused on quantifiable measurements of health instead of outward appearances, the world would be a better place.
Right. And if the media and government were really interested in fixing the problem, they’d look at ways to encourage kids to get outside and play, and to help parents feel those kids were safe. IMO, a huge part of the growing problem is kids not playing outdoors more: no recess or gym at school, no neighborhood ties getting them to play with their friends after school (thanks, busing!), fewer parks in McNeighborhoods, more parental fear about the guys in white panel vans. Over the last thirty years, we’ve seen a social shift toward staying indoors and on the couch, for every generation. Changing that pattern would do way more to decrease obesity and encourage health even in fat people than absolutely anything else we could do.
“Obesity is a designation on the BMI chart, that is a ratio of height to weight, and not a description of health.”
Actually, obesity causes or exacerbates type II diabetes, hypertension, cardio-vascular disease, cerebro-vascular disease (stroke), and obstructive sleep apnea; just to name a few. Obesity is most definitely a description of poor health, or a predictor of poor health.
“if you make someone ashamed of their body, they wont want to take care of it.”
Actually, when a rational mind identifies a problem (obesity), it will want to take care of it. Shame on the irrational mind which is in denial.
“If we focused on quantifiable measurements of health instead of outward appearances, the world would be a better place.”
Actually, obesity is a quantifiable measurement of health, and should be focused on by the individual, with the help of his/her physician, so the world would be a better place.
“Obesity is most definitely a description of poor health, or a predictor of poor health.”
You really don’t get it. According to the BMI charts, I am considered over my recommended BMI. I lift weights 4X-5X per week and ride an exercise bike every other day. I have a low fat content, large muscle mass body. In case you are not aware, muscle weighs more than fat. To determine obesity by BMI numbers is asinine. And yes there are overweight people who are healthy. Don’t believe me? Just google it.
You should also read the post below by “A Woman (in TX).
The Framingham study didn’t conclude that all obese people are unhealthy, just that, based on the observations of many obese people, they are much more likely to be unhealthy, that obese people have a significantly lower life expectancy, that they have a higher risk of diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, strokes, obstructive sleep apnea, etc. I’m glad you are enjoying good health, but that doesn’t change the medical facts. You either don’t get it, or you don’t want to get it.
Actually you are the one that doesn’t get it. The infamous Framingham study has been contradicted and misquoted in so many ways it’s kind of shocking that anyone still has the gall to quote it. The entire study was a reporting based study with no experimental component at all. The cholesterol findings found that high cholesterol was bad, until age 47 and then lower of cholesterol increased mortality. The has never been a causative component to heart disease, simple correlations only, and not all of them survived critical observations of the studies. The entire beginning of “Obesity is bad for you” came from a political/personal observation in the same way that sodium became an unfounded bugaboo. The link between Type II Diabetes has alway had the arrow pointing in the wrong direction. Honest studies are indicating that the insulin problems caused by diabetes make weight control challenging, at least. Most of what you know, that has been reported in the media gets proven wrong time and time again, and historical examination usually leads to the discovery that these types of declarations have a beginning in bias and prejudice instead of science (if you don’t want to believe it check into where the sodium is bad for you or fat in the diet is bad for you came from, it ain’t science). And BMI…sheesh it started as a simple survey of observations in a village in Europe comparing height vs weight with no other factors considered…this is science how?
“Obesity in adulthood is also associated with a striking reduction in life expectancy for both men and women. Among 3457 subjects in the Framingham Study, those who were obese (BMI ≥30 kg/m2) at age 40 years lived six to seven years less than those who were not (BMI ≤24.9 kg/m2)… Obesity is also associated with an excess risk of many disorders, including diabetes mellitus, insulin resistance, hypertension, dyslipidemia, heart disease, stroke, sleep apnea, cancer, and many others.” UpToDate Online Textbook of Medicine
My husband regularly rides 15-plus miles a day during his lunch hours at work, five days a week. And when able, also rides on the weekends. He also weight-lifts and runs 10ks. He does not smoke and does not over eat. Despite this, he is considered to have a high BMI. And surprise-suprise! He pays a higher premium on his insurance.
Go figure!
All of the people I know who are obese have the following characteristics: (1) None eat junk food; (2) None eat in restaurants very often; (3) None eat super large portions of food at meals; (4) All of the women have had children.
All of the obese people I know are middle-class people who eat healthy meals; are aware of the various diets that have been promulgated over the years and have tried most of them without success; and engage in normal physical activities for their age.
If you look at the artworks of earlier times, most women in them look rather heavy–Rubens’ women would be considered fat, would they not? In eastern Europe, specifically Germany, statues from 6,000 years ago that archaeologists have discovered portray women that they think must have been goddesses; the statues show women with big bellies and large breasts and, from today’s perspective, look quite fat.
Today it is politically incorrect to say almost anything about anybody from any “minority” group–gays, blacks, etc. So what I think is happening is that people are deflecting their negative comments from those groups (you get called a “bigot” if you say anything negative about politically correct groups) and placing them onto a group of people that at present are considered politically incorrect in their physical appearance.
There are many tell-all books about fat people losing lots of weight. They all admit that they ate to make up for emotional problems and they ate lots of junk/fast food. By exercising and watching what they eat they become a normal weight in an amazingly short time.
“There are very few old fat people,” is something doctors say a lot. Diabetes, hypertension, joint problems, difficulty in recovery, etc are all things that the obese are routinely treated for that don’t tend to affect the skinny.
I am skinny, despite having 6 kids because I exercise. I eat whatever I like, be it cheese popcorn, Coke, fast food hamburgers. Obesity is a choice people make each day when they eat more calories than they expend. If they do not mind how they look in the mirror then they will again eat more calories and quickly balloon up. Get outside and get moving if you don’t want to be fat, it is that simple.
“There are many tell-all books about fat people losing lots of weight. They all admit that they ate to make up for emotional problems and they ate lots of junk/fast food. By exercising and watching what they eat they become a normal weight in an amazingly short time.”
Of course those books say that–who would buy the books about the more common scenarios: fat person diets and eats healthy, loses weight, gains it back in a year? Or thin person eats mostly junk food, stays thin? Do you think the much larger amount of romantic comedies that end when the protagonist gets married show that life ends at marriage?
““There are very few old fat people,” is something doctors say a lot. Diabetes, hypertension, joint problems, difficulty in recovery, etc are all things that the obese are routinely treated for that don’t tend to affect the skinny.”
You may have noticed that lower appetite is a common effect of aging. Doctors are pretty biased themselves, and they like spinning this tale.
“I am skinny, despite having 6 kids because I exercise. I eat whatever I like, be it cheese popcorn, Coke, fast food hamburgers. Obesity is a choice people make each day when they eat more calories than they expend. If they do not mind how they look in the mirror then they will again eat more calories and quickly balloon up. Get outside and get moving if you don’t want to be fat, it is that simple.”
Unless you’re doing Michael Phelps levels of exercise (unlikely with 6 kids), you’re skinny because your parents were skinny. You’re fit because you exercise, but particularly for thin people (less weight takes less energy to move), normal levels of exercise don’t burn enough calories to make you skinny if you’re eating whatever you want. Maybe you shouldn’t generalize from your own experience, which is necessarily limited.
“I am skinny, despite having 6 kids because I exercise. I eat whatever I like, be it cheese popcorn, Coke, fast food hamburgers. Obesity is a choice people make each day when they eat more calories than they expend. If they do not mind how they look in the mirror then they will again eat more calories and quickly balloon up. Get outside and get moving if you don’t want to be fat, it is that simple.”
Well good for you! I have given birth to 4 boys, eat healthier than my husband & even, at times eat too little, exercise, yet I am over weight! But I have had a medical condition for the past 10-15 years that (among other things) led my body to behave as if I was a diabetic even though I was not until I gained enough to actually develop the disease.
You are an exception, not the rule. The idea that “if I do it this way & get this result, you will have the same if you do the same” is a fallacy.
“Obesity is a choice people make each day when they eat more calories than they expend.”
Weight loss & gain is *not* all about intake and exertion. That is a common misconception that sounds logical, and was even taught to many, but it dismisses so many factors that it a joke. Eating too little helped me (and many others) actually gain weight.
Then you’re happy with your body? Or you’re not? Try harder physically and not just spiritually. The ratio is the ratio, and humans don’t make the rules. But we should know the rules. Compare years of uncoordinated semi-efforts, distraction, not paying attention to your body, making excuses about listening to the Government vs. years of coordinated fitness, slowing down, paying attention, not being greedy or fast-living or the constant success-seeker/life of the party. Yes, healthy people live differently, and 99% of them are not overweight.
If Rubens was painting today I suspect his models could all double as extras in a movie set in a concentration camp, absent, of course, the artificially enhanced breasts.
What is called a normal female form today in the world of fashion and entertainment is far from normal or healthy. I have known a good many extremely strong and fit women who would be called fat by those in the world of entertainment. That includes marathoners and those who weight trained almost daily. The current fad for ripped abs is simply not realistic for most women because healthy fit women are supposed to have a layer of subcutaneous fat.
People are fat for two reasons, one of which was stated by Werewife in Post #1, high carb diets.
#1) The truth is the two worst things you can eat are sugar and grain. Live on “Healthy” low fat packaged food and that is where most of your calories will come from. We are evolved or designed by God, depending on your beliefs, to live on leafy green vegetables, the occasional treat of starchy roots or sweet berries, and a lot of animal meat and fat.
Live on the traditional diet and you will be lean and healthy. Get a large portion of your calories from starch and sugar and you will be fat and have the whole host of modern diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, gout, bowel problems, arthritis, and dementia. It is that simple. Everyone I have known who has switched from high carb/low fat diet has lost weight until they were lean and all their other health problems have vanished. I have never observed anyone lose weight and get healthier on a low fat high carb diet.
#2) The reason poor people are fat is because food that is high in sugar and starch is the cheapest way you can put calories on the table. The 3 Brand X frozen pizzas for $7, whatever cookies are on sale, and the $1 special on a 2 liter bottle of Orange soda is the cheapest way a poor family can meet their caloric needs. And your kids will eat it without complaint. Feeding kids is a pain in the bottom, and if they will eat the food without squawking, that alone is a strong inducement to buy it.
And this stuff is addictive, easy to cook, and available at vending machines and drive up windows.
It is expensive and much more work to eat a healthy diet, and it doesn’t help that the medical authorities are telling you the wrong things to eat to be healthy and that healthy diets like Atkin’s are dangerous.
All the vegans and low fat apostles can flame away, I could care less. My real life experience trumps tells me you are wrong.
You know, I tried to argue with an otherwise-sensible liberal once that it was cheaper to buy fat-promoting foods when on food stamps, and she simply would not listen? No, she insisted that food-stamp people were simply ignorant and needed to be educated in healthy foods. You can’t open the eyes of the willfully blind.
Right now I have my husband on the Wife Diet: he only gets to eat what I bring him. Portion control, baby – and lots and lots of veggie chopping by me. His main foods are a low-cal, low-sodium, low-carb hearty veggie soup I invented (with lean chicken or beef added) and salad, plus a portion-controlled serving of what everyone else is having for dinner. He likes this much better than his previous choice, Atkins – he can actually eat what he craves. He’s also less cranky, more alert, and less hungry than on any other diet he has tried – all serious problems in the past. Hopefully this will get his weight under control for the sake of his naval career.
Jamie,
Bravo Zulu to both you and your hubby. If successful, and I have no doubt that a navy wife would be, you may want to bring your success story to the attention of your command Ombusdman. If your spouse serves on a ship/sub or in a squadron, the medical department (flight surgeon for squadrons) may be very interested in touting similar eating habits.
Keep up the good work!!
I love it – the wife diet! Haha. Keep it up.
Yes, this mirrors my experience. Lots of fish and chicken for us, but we use real butter, lots of cheese and whole milk for our animal fats. Then, we always spend a good amount in produce. I no longer drink any soda, and I allow myself fruit juice for my sweet drink, but I only buy 100% with no sweetener/suger added with tea for my caffeine. We cook a lot from scratch and when we go out, it’s always sit down and I always split my portions into two or three meals worth. At nearly 40, my blood pressure is right where it should be and runs low at times. My husband isn’t as well off, but he still drinks soda and sneaks a lot of fast food lunches.
Your analysis of why many poor and others are obese is correct. Much of it is about money. $9.00 for a small package of meat or $9.00 for 3 large boxes of Ho Ho’s. $2.00 to $3.00 a POUND for fruits $5.00 for a complete meal at a fast food place.
Losing weight for many older people can be extremely difficult even with a better diet of low carbs because the metabolism has slowed and many times the person has problems with mobility.
For the morbidly obese it’s an addiction to food and an enabler. I’ve never seen a story about a morbidly obese person who had a skinny enabler feeding them.
Common sense has gone out the window on obesity just like it’s absent from any other problem addressed by liberals.
My 4yo kimchee granddaughter (1/4 korean) knows who Mickey D’s is. This is a bad sign. So I take her elsewhere on our weekend breakfast trips. Given that her parents, both of them, come from a long line of hobbits I ‘spect she’ll never become ‘mass o meat’ but even so, when she’s with me the food pyrawhatev these days is dead to me. Taubs has shown me that none of these jackwagons knows what they’re talking about.
Had Nobel Prize winner, Ancel Keys not doctored his research data to support a particular conclusion;
had the medical profession not swallowed whole-hog the lipid hypothesis;
had Senator George McGovern not represented a grain producing state and chaired a powerful legislative agricultural committee;
had the USDA not created a “food pyramid” built upon “whole healthy grains”;
had Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz not lobbied for cheap, plentiful, subsidized grain for America and the world;
had “the pill” not been invented;
had women not abandoned traditional child-care tasks in order to abandon the home and to enter the work force en masse;
had a “fast food” industry not developed to feed families whose mothers/wives now worked outside the home;
had an incredible number of wheat and corn based convenience foods not been developed to feed families whose mothers/wives now worked outside the home; and
had Nobel Prize winner Norman Borlaug not bred an incredibly addictive and highly glycemic improved strain of wheat as part of the “green revolution”—
we would not be currently be faced with an epidemic of obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and heart disease.
Obesity and these other diseases are not moral failings. These diseases are the unintended consequences of many well meaning people and organizations and their efforts throughout the twentieth century. Read the book “Wheat Belly” and watch the movie, “Fathead”. You will be amazed.
Boy do you have that correct. Did you know Ancel Keys invented the K Ration?
Hear, hear. Nice job. I bristle a little at staying home, but that’s just my current “what I’m used to.” With a network of support from woman without cats glasses, I think I could do it.
#4, #5, and #7, you guys are on it. The Western diet is high in carbs and sugar. Rates of obesity and diabetes are exploding in places like India and China, where globalization has introduced more Western food to their diets.
Read Gary Taubes. “Why We Get Fat” and “Good Calories/Bad Calories” put out some fascinating theories that will challenge everything you think you know about food and how the human body processes it.
In my own case, I am fat due to bad choices in food, and not getting nearly enough exercise. However, as a society, we forget that just 100 years ago, food was very hard to come by in most of this country. We are only 3 generations removed from famine (my great grandmother often went hungry growing up in Edinburgh, Scotland). We are given a genetic imperative to eat as much fat and carbohydrates as possible, and due to that imperative, as well as amazing access to cheap food, as well as less physical labor on our own part to grow it, we get fat. Now, many people can eat more healthy food and exercise and lose some weight. However, not all diets work for all people.
You’re quite right; it’s ridiculously cheap to eat 4,000 calories a day right now in the USA. But added to that, few of us have physical jobs anymore. Most people, including many working poor, have jobs that involve sitting or standing in place all day, with little real physical effort. And many, like me, have a high-stress long hours job that involves sitting in front of a computer screen for many hours a day. It would be nice to jump up every half hour and do a turn, but many of the tasks I’m involved in take hours and are extremely interactive meaning I can’t leave. I often sit scarcely moving for four-five hours at a time, and only notice how stiff and sore I am when I get done and my concentration breaks. It’s exhausting, and when I’m done for the day I don’t want to move at all, much less exercise for a few hours, but I do so quite often, usually hiking 3-4 miles.
And that’s what we do for entertainment, too. Sit and play a video game that’s exciting and difficult (i.e. stressful in the fight-or-flight sense) or perhaps very frustrating. Or watch movies that make us frustrated or excited etc.
So what we have for vast numbers of people is a combination of work and play that is stressful but non-physical with plentiful and cheap food. And a natural propensity to eat lots of calories to prepare for the non-physical fight-or-flight response we’re constantly causing in ourselves.
This is not a rich-vs-poor thing and never has been. The upper class have generally been fairly thin historically, as they were often warriors or rulers and had lots of ‘leadership’ chores, while the poor were thin because they couldn’t get enough to eat and worked like demons to get even that. It’s always been an upper middle-class and especially a mercantile thing, because the same rules applied: plenty of food with a high-stress non-physical job. A blacksmith might become wealthy if he gained a grand master’s post in a guild, but then he would become fat, because his job would change to administration–high-stress non-physical, instead of the serious physical work of a journeyman or low-level master.
What to do about it? I’ve tried dozens of diets/lifestyle changes; for the last five years I’ve had a caloric intake that according to every book and website I’ve read should have me losing 2-3 pounds a week. I’ve gained 25 pounds over that time. I exercise several times a week to boost the metabolism, I’ve tried Atkins, Joe Dillon, etc, all without success. Three months I lose weight, one-two months I hold steady, and then one-two months I gain it all back and add another 15-20 pounds before I finally quit. I’ve been through the same pattern many times, and I wish I’d never tried to lose weight at all. I’d be so much better off if I only weighed 230lbs, which is what I weighed when I started my first ‘lifestyle change.’
I think I know what to do; quit my job and do something that requires constant physical activity. I came to this conclusion years ago, and here I sit in front of the computer still. Even though it’s a slow day, and I’m taking a somewhat extended break, I still have that unpleasant knowledge that something is waiting to bite me before I go on vacation next week. I’ll be working till midnight, and then of course I should stand up and exercise for an hour.
Yeah. Go ahead and hold your breath while you wait for that to happen.
You’re very honest. Best wishes in everything. You can find the right combo if you keep testing (Mr. Edison
It is neither.
Indeed it is a logical fallacy that it must be one or the other.
Is “neither” a permissible answer?
Obesity is at most possibly a symptom of a disease. It is not an independent risk factor for mortality but one corresponding with and often caused by diabetes/insullin resistance or some other factor that causes both. As Taubes notes, many people don’t have a problematic insulin response to simple grains and sugars, and stay thin–we all know this from experience (plenty of thin people with lousy diets out there). But fat alone isn’t the sign of mortality, as a few studies have shown:
A recent study by Jerant and Franks found that the correlation between BMI and mortality in the obese and severely obese (“morbidly obese” is a terrible term since most such people are not in immediate danger of death) disappears when you control for hypertension and diabetes. In fact, among people with diabetes, there’s a slightly negative correlation between BMI and mortality–thin diabetics are at greater risk! (Anthony Jerant, Peter Franks. “Body Mass Index, Diabetes, Hypertension, and Short-Term Mortality: A Population-Based Observational Study, 2000–2006″ J Am Board Fam Med July-August 2012 vol. 25 no. 4 422-431)
Another study controlled for “healthy habits,” looking at how many of four healthy habits people did relative to weight: (1) Not smoking, (2) Not drinking in excess, (3) Exercising regularly (moderately about every other day), and (4) eating 5 or more fruits or vegetables a day. They found that only among those who had no healthy habits–i.e., sedentary smoking alcoholics with poor diets–was there a big difference in mortality between “normal” weight, overweight, and obese populations. And the effect was huge: Obese people with no healthy habits had about six times the mortality risk of obese people with 4, who in turn had the same mortality risk as normal weight people with 4 healthy habits. In other words, it’s what you do that matters, not what you weigh.
Being fat certainly causes greater joint strain, but ambitious athletes have it even worse. If you looked at me on the street, you’d think I’m a fat whale who must have horrible cardiovascular problems, blood as thick as pancake batter, a shut down pamcreas, etc. But my blood tests show unusually low cholesterol (and unusually low LDL and vLDL too), an excellent A1c and blood sugar, and my only health problem is hypertension–which my normal weight father had as well, and which is responding well to treatment. Even in health, it’s what’s on the inside that counts, and what’s inside a fat person may surprise you.
Both.
Some people have metabolisms that push them toward obesity. Many have metabolisms that react badly to refined carbohydrates and corn sugar (both of which are hard to avoid in the marketplace).
I’m lucky – I eat plenty (sometimes a lot), drink beer, and still don’t put on weight.
But some people just plain eat too much. No one ever got to 500 lbs on 2,000 cal/day.
For fortynine years I would have said I was “lucky” like you, then 50 hit and the arthritis started catching up with me (born without cartilage on top of my femurs). I slowed down – no more golf and more beer.
At any rate, I’m 65 now and trying to get rid of the extra 30 lbs I put on in abbut 3 years. Be careful, you might not always be so lucky and once the weight is there it is hard to get rid of sometimes.
More leg, less mouth, even less TV. Problem solved.
You’re provably wrong. In fact it’s exactly that sort of flip, dismissive ignorance that has caused the obesity epidemic. Congratulations on being part of the problem.
Obesity may be accompanied by diabetes, hypertension, and hypercholesterolemia, which, to a large extent explains why ‘obesity is bad for you’. But not all of the obese suffer these problems, and absent these complications, obesity isn’t necessarily bad for you. As for being ‘bad aesthetically’, that’s a cultrual prejudice. The most desirous body image has changed numerous times over the centuries, and varies from culture to culture. Obesity is neither a moral failing or a disease; it is a habit.
If being a drunk is a disease, so is being a fatso.
I remember being in Guangzhou back in 2002. It’s a city of 9 million people across the bay from Hong Kong. I could go an entire day and not see one obese person. In Hong Kong it was completely different. Fat people were everywhere. The only differences? Diet and exercise.
I live near Shanghai now. Fast forward 10 years to the present, the Chinese look mostly like Americans do now. Fat. The only thing that changed was the diet and the amount of exercise people got. It’s not sexy but those are the answers. Diet and exercise.
Historical perspective is important.
That many people today are fat–even unhealthily obese–is as much something to be celebrated as decried.
For thousands of years, the human race toiled endlessly, often unsuccessfully, to reduce the scarcity of food. Many if most people went hungry, and not a few of the starved.
Today food is superabundant in developed societies–so superabundant, indeed, that the poor tend to be fat.
Sure, bring fat is less optimal and less aesthetic than being of normal size.
But let’s keep it real: every oleaginous glutton at the same time represents a triumph for humankind.
Yet an army of pious malcontents perpetually whinge and moan each and every one.
There is just no pleasing some people. They decry too much of a good thing as if it were a bad thing. Well, it’s not as good as it might be, but it’s better than many alternatives.
Historical perspective is important.
That many people today are fat–even unhealthily obese–is as much something to be celebrated as decried.
For thousands of years, the human race toiled endlessly, often unsuccessfully, to reduce the scarcity of food. Many if most people went hungry, and not a few of the starved.
Today food is superabundant in developed societies–so superabundant, indeed, that the poor tend to be fat.
Sure, bring fat is less optimal and less aesthetic than being of normal size.
But let’s keep it real: every oleaginous glutton at the same time represents a triumph for humankind.
Yet an army of pious malcontents perpetually whinge and moan about each and every one.
There is just no pleasing some people. They decry too much of a good thing as if it were a bad thing. Well, it’s not as good as it might be, but it’s better than many alternatives.
Do we see anybody in the world who has to either farm or hunt their own food who is fat? Anybody at all?
Yes, we do. Read “Why We Get Fat”, by Gary Taubes.
I did my residency at the University of Iowa, where we had a term called the “Iowa Unit” to utilize when the number of pounds got so high as to simply lose all meaning (all right, it was mean but O.R. humor is a lot like war humor, you just do it to survive).
My theory was that there was a sudden change in exercise levels, i.e. the introduction of farm equipment, that was not compensated for by dropping the number of calories consumed. But my, oh my, that Iowa farm cooking is the best in the world! It does make for big farmers, however.
Oh please, obesity is an individual moral failing – a lack of self-control and discipline. Amazingly these same characteristics in an individual lead to poor performance in school and on the job and in raising children. Go figure.
So you explain all the extremely successful overweight people I know… how, exactly?
Statistical aberration. Weight is inversely correlated with income in the US. That’s a fact- however, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t outliers like your acquaintances.
I’m fat, I won a gold medal at the International Physics Olympiad in high school, went on to graduate with strong grades at Princeton (engineering)and NYU Law, and am now a successful patent lawyer. What international academic awards have you won?
I tend to look at life experiences to evaluate the answer to many questions. My father was one of 6 children who grew up during and after the Depression of the 1930′s. Four of them fought weight problems all their lives, yet two stayed skinny. One literally died from morbid obesity. They all worked from can see to can’t see as kids at hard physical labor. They all ate the same high-fat high-sugar diet common to rural America at the time.
Their father and mother were heavy people who lived in their own house till their late 80′s then lived to be 92.
I am convinced there is a genetic component to weight problems that is given far too little weight in the argument today. I also agree with a commenter above who said we should be evaluating health instead of weight.
I can’t disagree that there is a genetic component for some people but it is overused by many to explain their increased girth.
Such anecdotes are typical, but the fact is you don’t know how much each person ate at each meal, and you weren’t with them all the time. Or were you.
People get fat because they eat more calories than they burn. It’s that simple.
No. You are absolutely wrong. Period. Full stop.
When you eat carbohydrates your body secretes insulin. Insulin signals your fat cells to stop releasing fat into your blood stream and to absorb the sugars in your blood and convert them into fat.
In the absence of insulin, your fat cells release fat which your muscles can use as fuel. Your body will also convert fat into sugars for your brain to use.
Stop eating carbohydrates and watch weight that you could never lose despite hours of weekly exercise drop off. Also watch blood sugar levels that warned of impending diabetes drop to normal levels, blood pressure drop to normal levels, high density cholesterol levels rise and low density cholesterol levels fall to the point that drugs are no longer needed.
Getting enough exercise to burn off carbohydrate calories is hampered by the need to work. Unless you inherited a trust fund, you can’t spend enough time in the gym to burn off the carbohydrate calories. Or, you can quit your desk job and dig ditches for a living but I doubt that you will make enough to pay the mortgage.
I think anyone who believes they will eat their way out of obesity is kidding themselves. You must exercise. The human body is covered in muscle. It can take a fall. It is hard to injure badly, and heals by itself. What sign do people need before they realize the body is meant for movement, exersion, power, protection, and endurance?
You want to get to the bottom of if obesity is a genetic disorder, a disease, or a moral failing? Turn off the electricity and you’ll get the answer.
Anyone besides me remember when the “diet lunch special” was a cooked hamburger patty, (no breads), some veggies (usually sliced tomatoes), and some cottage cheese with milk, coffee or tea to drink? Maybe half a fruit too?
So, there’s about one absolute definite factual explanation of why people are fat per independent thread in these comments, and most of them contradict one of the other absolute definite factual explanations. This should tell us something.
Yep. Obesity is a multifactorial disease, like heart disease. And just like heart disease, the right treatment for one person may not work for another. In fact, it may be just the wrong advice.
Dr. Dalrymple, as other commenters have noted, you would benefit from reading Gary Taubes’ book, “Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It.” Taubes explains research showing the effect of eating sugar and simple carbohydrates on the endocrine system. Research shows that people who eat a lot of carbs can be starving while getting ever fatter simply because their insulin production is sending the food they eat straight to the fat cells instead of making it available for energy. They are caught in a vicious cycle. Worse, the low-fat/high-carb diets currently recommended for heart health exacerbate the problem. The more the public is educated about how the carb/insulin cycle affects them, the more motivated people will be to get out of it.
Unfortunately, as a solution Taubes recommends the Atkins diet, which can cause kidney failure, kidney stones, gout and osteoporosis.
Other diet and fitness experts educating the public about the role of the endocrine system in weight loss with more thorough explanations than Taubes provides and healthier diet recommendations include Jillian Michaels in her book, “Master Your Metabolism,” and Dr. Michael Aziz in his book, “The Perfect 10 Diet.”
By the way, one of Taubes’ major contributions to the field in “Why We Get Fat” is his history of which experts in charge of telling the rest of us how to live blew it so badly that they effectively are the creators of the obesity epidemic. This puts an entirely different light on the belief that the obese have failed in their own personal responsibility when you consider that the advice they were following to get or stay slim was instead absolutely guaranteed to make them fat and sick.
Thank you for the recommends on books. I cannot handle atkins. that “irritability” that other people go through is “unmanageable migraines” when I try it.
I’ll go read Ms Michael’s book.
Really, thank you. I’ve got three weeks until the kids get back to school. I’d love to shed the weight I laid on when I was pregnant with them, and then immobilized by three needy pre-schoolers.
Let me also recommend _Wheat Belly_. I’ve been following the recommendations and have lost almost 30 lbs. The biggest improvement came from just giving up wheat.
There is a lot we don’t know about newer strains of wheat.
I bought “Wheat Belly” just for the recipes.
I’ve been stuffing everyone who stops by for coffee with those Banana Blueberry Muffins. They are beyond succulent–and fresh from the oven spread with cream cheese (or Neufschatel), they are simply over the top. The bigger point, though, for people who expereince out of control hunger levels, is that they’ve got what it takes to power you through a whole day. I can really see how a person could end up consuming 350–400 fewer calories/day on his regimen because the satiety level is so high. I also found the flaxseed breakfast wrap to also be mouthwateringly good, although as a certified cheese-head who also finds pesto somewhat underwhelming, I replaced it with a slice of cheddar.
Sorry, but if the readers who (gushingly) say Ms. Michaels recommends to “avoid chemicals” are accurate, she’s a crank.
I am going to assume she means the vernacular sense of chemicals- the weird non-food stuff in processed food. It’s clever to point out that celery is chalk-ful of chemicals, but it’s not useful communication.
She’s thin, she helps people lose weight, she seems to be succesful, Ms Yockey recommends her. There are some quite frightening diets out there, and some really eccentric dieters, so going with the recommendations of someone I know to be sensible, is worthwhile to me.
Really, thank you, Ms Yockey.
and, really, I’ve needed a book that covers endocrine system stuff. I’ve lost weight before, I just don’t know how, so I can’t quite reverse engineer it. It wasn’t like most diet books, I know that.
I was size 0 to 4, depending on the manufacturer- smaller than Gap’s smallest- with shadows under my collarbones, I could count my ribs- and I got pregnant. And pregnant again. I spent three and a half years starving hungry as I got fatter and fatter. It was awful- I’d be more hungry after I ate, than before. My husband remembers feeding me something deep-fried, for a crowd, and me eating until full, and I was still shaking with starvation-feelings. It was nuts. I went to stay at his mothers after the first kid, for the first six weeks, so he could finish his summer classes without interruption. She decided I needed to be on a diet, and on laxatives, at the same time I was nursing and recovering from a C-section. Awful. I had one complete meal in six weeks. I still joke that she’s going to have “She was Thin” on her tombstone. I still put half a dozen granola bars in my purse when we go visit. It’s a pretty crazy feeling, acting like a character in a book who has been rescued from the arctic. I was heavier at the end of the visit, than the start. Horrible.
I still remember the first day I wasn’t hungry, in years. It was the oddest sensation. I couldn’t tell what it was- the not being hungry.
And then, normal, but stubbornly pudgy. I was stubbornly not eating for days on end when I found I was 5 months pregnant the third time. I worry that she was deprived- I was running on coffee, and beef jerky and cheese sticks, at work. And coffee and nothing at home, since the kids needed food, and I was stretching a really small budget really far. And I wasn’t losing weight. Then I could eat, and she was smaller than both her brothers, anyway.
And then, again, with the hungry after eating, but not before. And not sugary anything. Oatmeal, eggs, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cheese-sticks- mac n cheese- kid food. fruit. carrots.
And then I did this thing for my skin, which totally worked, and I had a normal, average appetite and enough energy, and I would still be doing it all, except my hair started falling out. It was crazy. It was a high fish oil dosage, vitamin C, two daily multis- one in the morning, a pregnancy one at night- like, every two hours vitamin C and fish oil- and magnesium tablets, 200%- and I seriously, within three days, wiped out all the wrinkles on my face, scars shrank- I started on Friday, and by Monday morning- didn’t even have wrinkles between my eyebrows. I didn’t wash my face- and it cleared up everything- no eye-wrinkles- nothing. Just a hot washcloth. It was a drastic enough change that my kids teacher asked for the protocol and started doing it. Fish sticks, blueberries and raw spinach. black beans and red peppers, and coffee with milk and sugar. And water. lots of water. I lost a ton of weight, no idea how, since I wasn’t exercising. I started,towards the end,though.It had stopped a lot of pain, so it was easy to move. I’d still be doing all this, except all my hair started falling out.
I asked a doctor, and she was “Hey, scars don’t shrink.” Except-mine had. I asked an engineering friend, and he said ‘hey, calorie restriction shrinks scars- I do it myself, once a year.” except- I hadn’t restricted calories. And nobody really cared about the whole hair-loss thing. I cared. Something weird was happening, and there wasn’t an explanation.
The kids go back to school in three weeks, and I think a multiple systems approach is the right way to go. I’m not comfortable being this size. I’ve never been this size. I don’t have that “fat jolly person” persona down, at all. Oh- and one diet, that I tried in the spring, is literally the first time in my life I’ve craved potato chips. They’re nasty, and somehow, something triggered. It feels, after a good workout, like there’s a me with muscles, and this awful turtleshell of fat strapped onto me. It doesn’t feel right at all.
The kids will be away at school, instead of right underfoot. Seriously, for ten years I haven’t been able to take a step backwards without stepping on a cat, a dog, a kid, or move an elbow without whacking a kid in the head, or moving my arms without whapping someone. When my husband doesn’t have to work on a weekend, I try to sleep, so that I miss the panic attacks that nearly invariably come from not being able to walk through a doorway without someone stepping in front of me, or running into me. He gets spluttery at half a day like that- ten years. ten looonnnggg years. I know I’m like anyone else in this situation- everyone I know with cuddly kids- the mom has, basically, given up moving until there’s space.
SINNER!!!! Ye shall be shunned even unto the buffet and banished beyond the dessert cart.
I suspect that what foods cause problems for you may have a lot to do with where your ancestors came from. I think grain as a food group are currently getting a very bad rap. People have been eating grains for centuries because grains were far easier to stockpile for the winter than fruits and veggies in the days before canning and refrigeration. The problem may be the three grains most common in most American diets today -wheat, corn and rice – were mostly absent from the diet of many central and northern Europeans until quite recently. Wheat needs warm dry weather, rice was only known in areas of Moorish and Ottoman influence and corn is a new world crop. On the other hand the short growing season grains that do grow well in much of Europe such as oats, barley and rye, grains which once dominated the diet in those regions, have a far more limited place in our diets today.
For it to get on your hips, you must put it past your lips! Or as I tell my wife sometimes while she reaches for the evening chocolate while complaining about the area formerly known as her waist, “a second on your lips, a lifetime on your hips.” Yes, some people are more disposed to put on weight, but in order to gain weight, you have to eat. You can either exercise heavily enough to burn the calories you consume or you can exercise your “table muscles” and push your butt back from the table.
Age is unkind, especially for women, but hormonal changes in men also make them prone to added fat as they age, but even that can be controlled with diet and exercise. I have no more sympathy for obese people whining about a disease than I do for drunks. Both may get to the point where the obese must eat and the drunk must drink or become ill, but they started eating or drinking to excess because they liked it, allowed themselves to become habituated to it, and ultimately became addicted to it through their own doing.
…a forceful case that the obesity epidemic has been driven by structural changes in our environment, rather than embrace the reductionist view that the cause is poor decision making by individuals.
And therein (such kind of “thinking”) lies the story of the decline and fall of western civilization. No personal responsibility for any of your negatives.
And what the hell does he mean by “structural changes in our environment”? More McDonslds? Michelle Obama’s (and Kathleen Sebelius’) “food deserts”, places in inner cities lacking a supermarket in the immediate area, thus (the argument goes) people forced to buy Ding Dongs and Ho Ho’s at the local convenience store ?
Our sec’y of health and human services (when she isn’t busy writing volumes of arcane rules and regulations to implement Obamacare) travels around the country showing elaborate (and expensive) Obesity Maps of America.
Michelle’s reformed version of the food pyramid cost millions to develop and is simplistic and stupid.
…and thus, as the British Medical Journal put it in the same week as the NEJM editorial, “Using cash incentives to encourage healthy behaviour among poor communities is being hailed as a new silver bullet in global health.”
Insane. Like paying children for good grades.
In face of the whole moneymaking diet industry, this guy’s understanding (calories) is my kind of simple
Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds
Why does not one point to one of the obvious reasons the country is getting fatter, High Fructose Corn Syrup. The fact that we subsidize corn in this country to such an extent is one of the root causes of the obesity epidemic. This ties into why fatty unhealthy foods are cheaper.
Absolutely. Instead of making corn into high fructose corn syrup we should be making it into ethanol and using it to run our cars. Send our fuel money to the Midwest instead of the Mideast and get healthier in the bargain by keeping the HFCS out of our food.
That should read “no one”
Let me add my voice to the high fat, low carbohydrate chorus. I have struggled with my weight for most of my life. Yes, exercise makes a huge difference. I started walking to school in eleventh grade (about a four mile walk), and in a couple of months, I dropped twenty pounds — and even after I stopped walking to school (because I was falling asleep in third period chemistry), I kept the weight off for a couple of years.
I have been struggling for most of the last 30 years with excess weight and health problems related to it. Exercise? Lots of exercise. I was using a treadmill almost nightly, covering typically three miles in an hour–and it wasn’t making much difference, because I was eating a food pyramid diet.
The biggest problem is the lie about animal fats vs. carbohydrates. Last year, I changed my diet. I have not completely eliminated carbohydrate from my diet, but there is less of it than there used to be. I now eat eggs, sometimes eggs and sausage for breakfast. For lunch, I usually eat either a roast beef or turkey and cheese sandwich (heavy on the meat) and a banana or apple and a Coke. For dinner, I eat either broiled steak or chicken (typically 1/4 to 1/2 pound), vegetables, and some carbohydrate. And I usually have ice cream or pudding for dessert. My doctor also had me start taking Metformin, a medicine that helps the body do a better job of using blood sugar, instead of converting it to fat.
Since then, I have not dropped any weight–but my pants and shirts are now loose. My cholesterol numbers improved enough that my doctor first reduced my Lipitor dose, then had me stop it completely. My blood pressure, which was high enough that my doctor was considering putting me on medicine for it, is now 110/72, and my pulse is 68. I just punched a new hole in my belt–to make it smaller.
Yes, there are people with health problems that cause obesity, and there are people who have serious self-discipline problems. But our government has spent a lot of time misleading us, too.
You might want to have a look at “Dr.Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution” for suggestions to how you can avoid carbohydrates and still satisfy your craving for desert. While I don’t have diabetes, my wife does and since we have been eating according to his recommendations, we have both lost weight without ever being hungry or feeling deprived and our blood work is so remarkably improved that our doctors have asked what we had done.
If you can forgo the last carbohydrates, you will see even more of an improvement. I don’t believe that it is possible to eat no carbohydrates, especially when travelling but the fewer the better is a pretty good rule to follow.
http://www.amazon.com/Dr-Bernsteins-Diabetes-Solution-ebook/dp/B004QZ9PC4/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1
I see it as neither. Much of it is a temporary problem that will correct itself when people adapt to the new normal which is far less physical activity for both children and adults in the course of an average day. Long established eating habits are often slow to change. Eventually people start to see that a family’s traditional favorites from the time when grandpa swung an pickaxe every day has to become the occasional treat.
The decline in casual physical activity has been astounding. Consider the activities in a large office 25 years ago compared to today. There were trips to the reference library, trips to the central file room, trips to and from the data processing center with the coded sheets for operators to input, trips to the typing pool, etc. Today it is all on the desktop computer and the only walking that needs be done is to and from the restroom. Blue collar work is also far less physical than it used to be because most tools are now power assisted. Even farm and ranch work is less demanding. Riding an ATV isn’t nearly as physical as riding a horse.
The level of casual activity for children has also declined precipitously. Most school kids used to walk or bike to school and back every day. The public policy was for small neighborhood schools. Nor were parents paranoid about stranger danger, largely because there were lots of stay at home moms along the routes to and from school who watched out for the kids. At school there were morning, lunchtime and afternoon recesses. Children who lived within three or four blocks might even walk home and back for lunch. After school, on weekends and over the summer kid spent hours playing outdoors with neighbor kids. Today most kids are bused or their parents drive them to school. Recess has largely been eliminated. Instead of kickball with the neighbor kids children sit indoors in front of TVs and computers or are driven to organized activities at community centers.
To those who have concluded the Food Pyramid and high carbs is wrong. Good for you.
I am recovering from being very sick. I started to research out Nutrition and found the food police and the food pyramid are wrong. The American Diet is full of empty calories that get converted to immediate sugar. I wrote and created a Web site to tell others of my research
CoconutCreamCare What’s wrong with the American Diet? Fats, Salt and Cholesterol are Good for you.
Read it and find out.
The answer to the question, of course, is it depends on which postulation serves the Leftist agenda at any given time.
Truth is defined as revolutionary truth, or that which serves the furtherance of the revolution.
Get with the program.
It’s common practice within the modern lexicon to classify every frickin’ imaginable human condition as a dis-ease.
Including pregnancy ! Including an ever expanding litany of “things” that can be wrong with that thing inside your skull.
(I think “excessive happiness” or euphoria has made it into the DSM)
The banishment of evil and sin…as in the 7 deadly sins.
Why is this anyone’s business? It isn’t. Free people are not required to justify the circumstances of their existence. And the author’s false premise that his question has an either/or answer is utterly ridiculous.
AS more and more of Obama’s people go on food stamps and welfare, then we can presume that taxpayers are actively paying for the food that the slackers are eating. If I’m in line at the supermarket and see Ma Kettle with her three double-chins and her pack of screaming spawn (one of whom might be named Precious Honey Boo Boo) loaded up with Little Debbie’s Ding Dongs, pork rinds, and MacNcheese(s) in her shopping cart and *then* she pays for the mess with food stamps, do I get to do more than raise a mental eyebrow?
What are the chances that Ma Kettle is already an active diabetic along with high blood pressure and I’ll get to pay for her health care, and that her brood might also be either teetering on the brink of diabetes or have achieved it already … and they’re all ignoring silly stuff like blood sugar levels and salt because they were born EQUAL, dammit, and can eat what they choose to!
I agree that people should be able to eat what they want to. But not if I’m paying for it, and especially not if I’m paying for the horribly expensive consequences of it.
I don’t aggree with the bigoted undertone of you comment. And yes I am saying your comments are bigotted. I am not saying this because you point out the truth; I agree with you on one count. When you use the names you chose to use and refer to them as Obama’s people, it is obvious you are talking about so called black people. I see as many Joe Bob and Polly Sues on food stamps buying unhealthy crap as I see Honeys and Preciouses. This is not a black and white deal. It is a have and have not deal.
I do see an issue with the current food stamp system. I too am irritated to see junk food products in the carts of poorer people on assisted living. I believe that some people need help and welfare is a way the government can keep people from starving. The problem is that people on food stamp assistance should be limited. Use food stamps, you can’t have foods xzy. Don’t like it, find a way to get off welfare so you. An have the luxury to kill yourself on your dime.
Problem two. The government subsidizes the farming of the wrong crops. Corn and sugar are highly subsidized so there is heavy incentive to farm those crops. These things are used as staples in everything from cereal, instant meals, fast food to soft drinks. the cheapest food items tend to be to most salt, high corn starch, simple carb filled, and fat laden food items on the selves. I say reverse the subsides. Give farmers insentives to grow healthier foods. The price of those healthier items fall, the unhealthy items become more expensive and when a person has to make a choice, it is easier to make a healthy option.
It is a shame when in the poorest communities in our county, for a little under a dollar, a kid can buy a piece of candy, a bag of chips and a sugary soda when he can’t purchase an apple in the same store. I don’t presume to have all of the answers and I am open to debate. I do know that it is made much easier to get the things that kill you in the poor communities of our country than the things that will keep you healthy. Drive through the Appalachians of west Virginia and the slums of New York, you will see more liquor stores, fast food joints, and 7 elevens that you will see a super market that offers fresh fruits and veggies.
We are urged to eat lots of whole grains, or at least grains, avoid meats and saturated fats, eat healthy vegetable oils (the ones that won’t sicken and kill herbivores in animal tests) and avoid sugar for healthy high fructose corn sweetener.
Eating meats and saturated fats kills the appetite.
It worked for my wife with Type II diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. She hated finger sticks, extremely so. She went off of carbs and instead stuffed her face with meat & fats foods seasoned with tomato sauce and cheese and accompanied by veg. She ate until she could eat no more.
She lost weight until it was back to what it was in college. Her high blood pressure and high cholesterol disappeared, along with her diabetes.
If a person cannot do that, perhaps an alternate solution would be “Nutriloaf.” It is all the food a person is to eat in one day, run through a blender and baked into a loaf, with meals being sliced loaf with plain water.
It is the ultimate weapon used to pacity incorrigible prison inmates, much more powerful than a month in the hole. Perhaps it can contribute some restraint to the appetite.
Dr. Dalrymple,
Please read Taube’s books before writing any more articles like this. You will save yourself much embarrassment and credibility loss.
Fat poor people are only responsible for following the advice of government public health experts and people like you in the medical profession who just trumpet conventional wisdom about obesity without being bothered to look at the evidence yourself. To save you time Taubes’ books are a great summation of that evidence. He spent 5 years researching the book. Taubes is a journalist of science and I would describe him as a rare writer who is unusually very well versed in understanding how science actually works, the scientific method, the works of science philosoper Karl Popper, etc. Education wise he has a master degree in Physics from Harvard which gives him a good grounding in understanding science from an unbiased perspective. His books are not diet books in he conventional sense. They are science books. Reading Taubes you will discover that the conventional wisdom that you parrot is based upon some very bad and very shaky science. Contrary to popular understanding, he actually makes few actual claims (at least in GCBC) about the correctness of the low carb approach, but does describe much past research and much epidemiological, archaeological, and anthropological evidence and some scientific evidence that is very persuasive in making the case for the low carb approach. He also explains in detail that our researchers have been doing bad science and going down the wrong path in testing the wrong hypothesis in most of their research in the last 30 years on obesity. That is luckily starting to change. Here is he latest example of a well designed and controlled experiment that makes his case: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154.
Mental “illness” has become the secular religion of the West, and Dr. Dalrymple, as a physician and psychiatrist has been able to make this argument clearer than anyone. True brain disorders are radically different than the character flaws and downright wicked behavior most would rather not take responsibility for. So I confess, I have just passed the threshold of obesity this year and I know fully well it is beyond my free will to change it. Now where the hell did I leave my buttered donut! See what I mean?!
Isn’t this all a bit premature? Leaving aside the lofty ethical issues — easily invoked by those of us so blessed by genes or good luck that we don’t have to worry about our weight — there’s a pressing need for the medical industry to get it’s act in gear about diet and metabolism. Instead, we get flip-flops and chaos, yet another example of spending-without-accountability on a truly epic scale — and yet it’s the medical industry claiming exemption from personal responsibility and dumping on the plump!
In the real world of the anguished dieter — three or four in my family, and they are smart, very needy and, IMO, understandably unhappy — Ornish is not Atkins is not Gary Taubes. But it seems there is no trustworthy guidance outside of public health platitudes. A full critical appraisal of Gary Taubes’ Why We Get Fat would be truly welcome. Is he full of it, or just partly correct, or what?
Meanwhile the torrent of crap continues, after all this time and billions of dollars of waste.
Over the course of my medical career I’ve seen a lot of dietary fads and advice come and go. It’s a complex, multifactorial modern disease not unlike coronary artery disease, and the answers are going to be different for different people. Here’s what I’ve learned:
1). Exercise is often over-rated. Increasing normal activity is what you want to do. For most people, working out increases the appetite so that in the end you eat more calories than you burn. I’m not saying that exercise isn’t healthy, just that it should not be part of a weight-loss plan unless one is truly sedentary. Or unless you plan on burning 1000 calories a day training for a marathon.
3). Portion sizes are out of control. After spending a summer in Europe, I would say that part of their weight advantage accrues from the sheer cost of food. Food in the US is so cheap, we just don’t realize it until we live where it isn’t (and are paying for a family of five!). You have to get creative when dining out, like skipping courses, ordering off the kiddie menu and ala carte. Don’t worry about maximizing your “value”- that is a calorie trap for sure!!
4). People worry far too much about “good food” and “junk food”. Food is food- some of it is better than others, but unless one’s diet is nothing but crap it really IS all right to have ice cream for dinner. It’s been drummed into our heads that we need to eat healthy food to compensate for junk- that’s just not true and it leads to overeating. No American is truly at risk for dietary deficiencies- but most of us are at risk for obesity. Most people simply won’t stick to a “healthy” diet all the time, given all the tasty stuff that’s out there, but the people doling out nutritional advice just refuse to account for the real world.
What refreshing advice! I just love it.
My personal favorite pithy statement on the issue comes, through friends, from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who was responding to a question from someone attending one of his retreats long ago in California. Supper had been served via a Tower of Babel assortment of dietary lines: kosher, macrobiotic, vegetarian, vegan, lacto-ovo, etc. The question was, in light of all those, what was the ideal diet. His response: “East what your mother gives you and don’t eat poison.”
Now, with the sand in the top of my hourglass emptying at an alarming rate, I have adopted my own special slant on this: The only really important thing about eating is that one absolutely love whatever it is.
I guess that typo could be interpreted as a terribly contrived pun, but I only meant to type “Eat…”
I believe the, ‘low carb’, ‘high carb’ yadda yadda yadda type advice is moot.
We all have VERY different diets, originate from different places whereas there’s no ’1 rule of thumb’ for staying fit, building muscle, improving cardio etc.,
I don’t advocate fast food in ANY shape or form as a ‘meal’. I’ll grab some fries or sandwich ONLY as a snack if I don’t have snacks on my person.
I’ve begun cooking dinner or eating out at a REAL restaurant at 7, 8 p.m. to get the essential and needed proteins, carbs etc., our bodies scream for. Rather than the Olive Garden, BK or McD’s crapola.
Again, Imo believe one’s health, the older we become has A LOT to do with our lineage. Diet can make ‘some’ changes/ improvements.
My brother and I have much of our Mom’s physical/ athletic attributes, body-type frame.
Whereas my sister has our father’s attributes, frame.
Our Pops is Italian and our Mom is Polish & Irish, respectively.
Pops is nearing 80 and has been dark-skinned, albeit healthy has a boxy-type shape & heavier since his ~40′s.
My mother will be 81 this year is light-skinned, an active housewife and always fit and trim.
My brother and myself have light skin and are thin no matter what. Though apply a great deal of effort to be ‘in-shape’.
My sister, whose fortunate to have dark skin, hair features and an avid outdoors person, she and her husband are also VERY active snowboarder’s, campers have a difficult time staying trim.
Made all the more difficult after her having 2 kids.
I’m not saying to, ‘Give up and be thankful for the person you are’ spiel but there’s so much we can do, adjust and improve upon.
Fatness is a moral failing.
This guy gets it:
http://www.fatgirljihad.com/438/fatness-and-self-loathing
I can – and have – eaten nothing for days while continuing a normal lifestyle including working out, and gained weight.
I am narcoleptic – which means a good night’s sleep is something I never experience.
Quite simply, no-one knows enough about how our bodies process food to be making any kind of claims. Calories in/calories out? You know how they get the measure of a calorie? Weigh food, burn it, make calculations based on weight difference before and after. That’s completely equivalent to a mix of physical and low or zero oxygen chemical reactions through multiple body organs, right?
Then there’s this: the brain hormone I’m missing (courtesy narcolepsy) is also involved in the digestive system and food processing. No-one understands how yet. The same goes for all the brain chemistry: everything is multi-purposed up there, and no-one really understands how it all fits together, although there are some people working on it.
Yes, I’m fat. Nothing I’ve done has changed this in the slightest. Working out, eating almost nothing, various diet attempts, nothing can shift the poundage. I do fall squarely into a group that usually ends up with weight issues, namely the chronically sleep-deprived. Since there’s no cure for narcolepsy, that’s not changing.
The thing is, when anyone sees a fat person, there is no way to know if that person is fat because they have a medical issue (rather more common than not, I suspect), or is fat because they stuff their faces and don’t exercise. I’d suggest not rushing to judgment over this or anything else. I can take responsibility for my own health, and I know what my problems are. The same applies to anyone else.
Unless you plan to pay for all my medical costs, my health makes no difference to you. Stop wagging fingers.
Yeah, I have narcolepsy too. I’m also a brain surgery survivor. I am on various types of medication to keep my nervous system on an even keel, and it’s a constant effort to do everything necessary to remain functional so that I can fulfill my home and work responsibilities.
And yes, it’s amazing how little food I need to get by on. Considering the fact that I don’t exactly make a ton of money, sometimes that works out to my advantage!
Bigger portions in restaurants are not a problem. I just ask for a doggie carton and have another meal or two at home later on.
All true, individual responsibility and all, but consider another aspect of the story, and I know you all don’t want to consider this, but take a look at a video about what’s in our diet: Sugar: the Bitter Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
Don’t flame me now.
Nowadays, poor people are more likely than rich people to be religious. Religious people are more likely to believe in punishment, and are therefore usually strict parents. What is the offense children are most likely to be punished for? It is not finishing all the food that’s on their plates. When parents teach children to clean their plates, they are inflicting a curse on them that will follow them the rest of their lives. Even when they know they are full, even though they know they are overweight, they will clean their plates.
http://www.jochnowitz.net/Essays/ObesityAndHell.html
Obesity a moral failing? Well, if so, it’s a convenient one in that it allows us easily to steer clear of the true moral reprobates: simply avoid those who cast a wide shadow.
Too bad liars, rapists, thieves, lechers and child molesters aren’t so easy to identify.
Based on my own experience, I am led to agree with the proponderance of responses here, that much of the problem resides in the high availability of cheap, high-carb, and (most significantly) officially-approved starchy foodstuffs. After all, what are the odds that the government would ever be right about something?
But the other component of this is the addictive cycle of blood-sugar spikes and withdrawal hunger that sabotages the attempts of many to deal with carbs in a portion-control kind of way. I believe some of us are simply programmed by our biology to become obese when exposed to starchy abundance. Who knows? Maybe it’s all a genetic lottery. Perhaps people like me are here for the sole purpose of tucking in during the seven fat years so that the species may survive the seven lean years.
I am aware, of course, that gluttony is a sin, and that implies overindulging is a moral failing. Problem is, it doesn’t take much in the way of extra food to put on the pounds. You can gain a hundred pounds in ten years by consuming as little as a hundred extra calories a day — do the math. That’s an extra slice of white bread with butter a day. Or an extra lite beer. Or two Girl Scout cookies. Or an apple. Or a plain baked potato. If that’s gluttony, call me Elvis. Thank you very much.
But as usual, C.S. Lewis provides a more nuanced take on gluttony: “a determination to get what [one] wants, however troublesome it may be to others.” Excess is one path to gluttony, but another is delicacy, and of all those who will someday be surprised to learn they are gluttons, the most surprised will be those who do not eat to excess but are nevertheless slaves to their desires.
http://jeaninallhonesty.blogspot.com/2008/03/is-dieting-christian-5b-cslewis-on.html
But in the final analysis, perhaps gluttony as a sin ranks below feeling oneself smugly to be superior to fat people. That would be the sin of pride.
Spot on!
Is obesity a “moral issue?”
THE GOLDEN RULE OF LAW and MORALITY 101:
All crimes are forms of theft: offensive attacks that deny the attacker’s victim something they, not the attacker, are entitled to; basic robbery is theft of one’s stuff (and so is arson); kidnapping, assault, and rape are all thefts of one’s bodily autonomy, murder is theft of one’s life, and lying (fraud) is only the most basic form of theft – it’s the theft of the Truth. (And lying includes presenting one’s merely subjective, unresearched, fact-free opinion as if it were objective fact)!
And even all threats are psychological attacks (aka: coercion, duress, extortion, “terrorism”) which are thefts of one’s peace of mind and security, and all non-defensive attacks are already classified as crimes.
After all, when you attack the Others first, then, by definition, you are the predatory criminal aggressor, and they are your innocent victims – there’s no two ways about it!
(Attacking second, in defense of one’s self and/or of innocent others, is always OK, and is in fact a mandatory requirement for having any sort of deterring justice in the world at all, ever! Without counter-attacks criminals have no reason to be deterred into ceasing theirs)!
Thus, we have developed a natural law, which rationally depends on these cause-and-effect facts, known as The Golden Rule of Law, which, by defining situational morality as “Do Not Attack First!” enables trust, progress, and Civilization. It is often abstracted as “THOU SHALT NOT KILL!”
It’s opposite might be called ‘the brazen rule of chaos,’ which defines immorality as “only we have the holy right to always attack all ‘The Others’ first, so there, nyah!” and so inflicts distrust, stagnation, and Barbarism. It has been abstracted as “THOU SHALT KILL!” (and is known today as “islam”)!
We are all ruled by Salesmen. Selling victimology negates self-reliant responsibility in an attempt to Buy(you)Low to Sell(Me)High… it’s part of the salesman’s aresenal of tricks to refuse to solve problems by ignoriong them, because “There’s no money in solutions!” These criminal negligents would spin all merely temporary problems with easy solutions into eternal crises, with only band-aid therapies (i.e: Please Give Generously – AGAIN!”) in order to sell themselves to us as our much-needed crisis-relief management expert leaders.
They attack EVERYONE ELSE first by advertising fear in order to sell us the greedy hope of relief from their own initial threats.
Their own choice of aggression defines them as predatory criminals: “immoral.”
When animals feel threatened, they horde food in the form of body fat, just in case they are driven out of their homes and have to escape.
Humans are animals and there’s no difference: our obesity epidemic is obviously caused by the salesmen.
If obesity is a “moral issue” (and it is) it’s not the victim’s fault – it’s “our leaders” fault!
Obesity doesn’t happen overnight.
It simply has to be a growing accumulation of fat.
If so, why is it so hard to say, “What’s happening to me?”, “My new clothes don’t fit!.” “Stop!”…before it keeps adding up?
I guess it’s at that latter point that obesity becomes a disease, like alcohol.
Fat Crimes.
A frail, skinny person who cannot bench press his shoes can feel free to lecture a healthy normal person eating a hamburger. Not only is the righteous thin person not guilty about being obnoxious he can get a smug glow that he is enlightening humanity. Mean while the evidence shows that the mortality rate stands at 100% for all of us thin or fat.