Poll: Obesity: fat people or true illness?

MelziGurl

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Jan 16, 2009
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My sister didn't become obese because of food, she had a thing called Cushing Disease and if you wish to know more about it just look it up. For some it's poor diet and exercise, while for others it's an actual illness or disability. My partners mother is obese due to her adoring son leaving marbles on the stairs so that she could break her ankles. They never healed properly and because of that, walking or standing for long periods can be a painful task. I give her alot of credit though, she does try.

EDIT: And my mother suffers from Thyroid problems.
 

Specter_

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Dec 24, 2008
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Hunde Des Krieg said:
Well, it isn't so cut and dry. Some people are lazy and become fat, some people are basically fat for life due to slower than normal metabolisms, other people don't know when to stop eating. It is never black and white no matter how it may appear.
This. Basically everyone can fit the current concept of beauty, with the correct diet and working out. But for some it's harder (sometimes a lot) than for others.

I believe the main "problem" is that a lot of people don't recognize that they have a psycholgical problem when it comes to eating, concerning what they eat and how much.

But you have to remember that not so long ago people we'd call obese were almost globally considered beautifull.
 

bjj hero

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Feb 4, 2009
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Weight gain is simple maths. Use less calories than you consume and you will put on weight. Want to lose weight? use more calories than you consume.

There are some people who have a genuine illness or take medication that means they will gain weight but the vast majority of over weight people are over weight through life style choice. They eat the wrong food and do no exercise.

Lunch box apologists annoy me. Its not the same as being racist, sexist or agist. These are factors you have no control over. Being fat, excluding the rare exceptions mentioned earlier, is the individuals choice. It may be a passive choice, not liking the gym or sports, liking cakes and pies, too lazy to cook healthy food, saladphobic/whatever; its still a choice in life style.

Im not rude to fat people in general. You want a shitty quality of life and healt problems? Thats fine, keep watching too much TV and eatting pies. IT pisses me off me taxes pay for their health care to keep them running.

Raising fat kids is another thing. For me its a form of neglect. Youre damaging their future and its shameful.

To those wanting to lose weight, follow my simple guide; Cut out the sugar and fatty foods, eat smaller portions and run 1-3 miles every other day. It will drtop off.
 

ChickDangerous

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Feb 8, 2009
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It also depends on your definition of obese.
The clinical definition of obesity in Australia is having a BMI over 30. I'm of the belief that it's a little ridiculous to hold everyone up to a single standard without taking into consideration the whole of the person's history. Some of these considerations are ethnicity (for instance Asians are generally built smaller than Caucasians), athleticism (serious athletes tend to have higher BMI's), height (very tall people who are well built are going to have higher BMI's than average sized people), structure (some people actually ARE big boned, although it is used as an excuse too often to be taken seriously by most people), lifestyle and then eating habits. My father for instance, is a personal trainer, state champion cyclist and runs 80km marathons. According to his BMI he's overweight, which is absolute bollocks because he's in fantastic shape.

Other people struggle with their size for a number of reasons, among them laziness, underlying medical issues and genetics. The thing is, you can't just assume that a large person is lazy. It's very rude and inconsiderate to the people who genuinely do struggle.
 

BubbleGumSnareDrum

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Dec 24, 2008
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Chubsters. I weigh 217 pounds, down from 245 back in December, and I plan to keep going. I was just being fucking lazy.
 

rossatdi

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Aug 27, 2008
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Was 245 lbs, started jogging four times a week and within 4 months I was 185 lbs.

There's no mystery, just eat less & exercise. The number of people with a genuine medical reason is minute. Most fat people (under 40) are just lazy & gluttonous. I know because I was.
 

Jovlo

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May 12, 2008
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You know, there are more and more obese people in developing countries these days. (1 out of 5 women in some African countries, but I'm not sure, had a lecture on it last week it's a bit foggy.)
This isn't because the people there can afford to eat to much, but because the food they can afford is fatty and unhealthy.
If you go shopping for food these days, you will find that unhealthy, greasy preprocessed food is a lot cheaper then fresh fruits and vegetables.
Because of this, you can find obese people that are still malnourished, all they eat is fat, nothing they actually need.
Poor people get fatter easier because they can't afford decent food, in Africa as well as in the developed world.

On the obesity is in your genes theory:
I've read that there was a Swedish study that showed that when you're obese as a kid and you loose weight, you will have problems staying thin for the rest of your life. They found out that when you're young, new fatty tissue builds up.
These cells stay for the rest of your life, deflating when you loose weight, inflating when you gain some.
People who were thin in their youth don't have all that fatty tissue and it's much harder to make it when you're grown up.
This is why people who never had weight problems as a kid don't get fat as easily as people who did.
Proper parenting is very important. Don't allow your kid to get fat.

Of course there are people who are fat because they just never stop eating, like my dad for instance...
 

elmaxx

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Oct 2, 2008
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chubsters south chapter represent!

heh, yeah been always heavier than "normal", but that doesnt mean it is an illness, you live with it the best you can and good living habits will make the extra weight useful for keeping excelent health.
 

space_oddity

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Oct 24, 2008
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Ignignoct said:
space_oddity said:
There is no gene that controls obesity. You cannot be predisposed to being overweight, regardless of metabolic rate or any other biochemical factor.

I believe obesity will be what early 21st century will be remembered for throughout history. Our descendants will read about a time when 1 in 2 children born in USA/UK/Australia will spend most of their lives clinically overweight, while globally, 1 in 5 people will live their entire lives in poverty.
No to the first paragraph, and yes to the second.

Warning: Wikipedia spam (read bolded for tl;dr)

"Like many other medical conditions, obesity is the result of an interplay between genetic and environmental factors. Polymorphisms in various genes controlling appetite and metabolism predispose to obesity when sufficient calories are present. As of 2006 more than 41 of these sites have been linked to the development of obesity when a favorable environment is present.[92]

Some of these include the FTO gene polymorphism and the NPC1 gene.[93] Adults who were homozygous for a particular FTO allele weighed about 3 kilograms more and had a 1.6-fold greater rate of obesity than those who had not inherited this trait.[94] This association disappeared, though, when those with FTO polymorphisms participated in moderately intensive physical activity equivalent to 3 to 4 hours of brisk walking.[95] Another study found that 80% of the offspring of two obese parents were obese, in contrast to less than 10% of the offspring of two parents who were of normal weight.[96][9]

The percentage of obesity that can be attributed to genetics varies from 6% to 85% depending on the population examined.[97] The thrifty gene hypothesis postulates that certain ethnic groups may be more prone to obesity in an equivalent environment. Their ability to take advantage of rare periods of abundance by storing energy as fat would be advantageous during times of varying food availability, and individuals with greater adipose reserves would be more likely survive famine. This tendency to store fat, however, would be maladaptive in societies with stable food supplies.[98] This is the presumed reason that Pima Indians, who evolved in a desert ecosystem, developed some of the highest rates of obesity when exposed to a Western lifestyle.[60]

Obesity is also a major feature in a number of rare genetic conditions: Prader-Willi syndrome, Bardet-Biedl syndrome, MOMO syndrome, leptin receptor mutations, congenital leptin deficiency, and melanocortin receptor mutations. In people with early-onset severe obesity (defined by an onset before ten years of age and body mass index over three standard deviations above normal), 7% harbor a single locus mutation."
I scoff at you for referring to wikipedia,
but tip my hat to you for sourcing your argument.
 

space_oddity

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Oct 24, 2008
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I think alot of the prejudice (and i use that term loosely) towards overweight people stems from the idea that obesity has come to symbolise alot of what is wrong with society, its wastefulness, decadence and greed.

Its absolutely none of my business what anyone put does to their body, unless it is impacting on someone else's survival, and some would argue that it might in this case.
 

Ignignoct

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Feb 14, 2009
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Cheeze_Pavilion said:
Railu said:
Cheeze_Pavilion said:
Railu said:
Drug addicts turn to drugs to ease their pain, overweight people turn to food. Heroin addicts can quit and so can you.
If you quit food, you will die.

Why is it that the people who complain about fat people seem to always be so cruel and dumb?
You can live for 3 weeks without food. Some people can fast for longer than that.

Cut back to the bare minimum, wow, what a concept.
There's a "bare minimum" of heroin? You know a lot of people who were heroin addicts that have been able to reduce their use to a "bare minimum"?
Don't ride the food/heroin comparison any longer.

That horse's back has long since broken.
 

Jimmyjames

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Jan 4, 2008
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apmpnmdslkbk said:
This is not so much meant to be insulting as it is more of an actual honest question.
Why don't you look at your poll again and ask yourself if it truly isn't meant to be insulting. "Chubsters" & "Badonkadonk". Yeah, that's not gonna insult anyone.
 

O maestre

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Nov 19, 2008
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only in western society could something like fat be considered a disease, i doubt that there are such illness' in the third world

the only valued argument is that metabolism is different for people, but that doesn't quite cut it. being fat is lack of control. also im sick of hearing about how some people have "struggled" to loose weight.
 

Simriel

The Count of Monte Cristo
Dec 22, 2008
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Large, and proud. Also healthy. Makes no sense, I am in perfect health, dispite being overweight. (note, overweight, not obese). Interesting point by the way. Will smith is obese.