Obesity

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  • #11
  • Posted: 06/21/2013 06:56
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EyeKanFly wrote:
Calling it a result of "laziness" is an extreme oversimplification. A more correct way to phrase it is that obesity results from a "sedentary lifestyle". The common American drives (or takes public transit) to work and then sits in front of a computer all day, drives home, eats dinner, and sleeps. There's just no room for exercise. Even if you do all you can to eat healthy (which really isn't that difficult if you have access to a decent supermarket, a refrigerator, and a stove), it can be very difficult to find time to exercise. The problem stems not from laziness, but from genuine problems deep within the American style of life. Even when we hate our jobs, we put work above all else: our family, our hobbies and interests, and our health. America (not that I use America only because I've never been to Canada, the UK, or Ireland so I don't know how it works there) has such a 24/7 culture. Anything you want you can get at any time of the day, any time of the year. Need a hamburger at 11pm on Thanksgiving? go to the McDonald's down the road. Need a leafblower at 4 in the morning on a Thursday? Head to Wal-Mart. Need to buy a car at midnight? Go down to the Honda dealer (seriously, 24/7 car dealers exist). Some other places in the world, everything shuts down on Sundays. I understand hospitals and other such places need to be kept open all the time, but do we really need to go out to a mall or a restaurant on a Sunday? I'm disgusted with the American way of life. Not with the American people themselves, they all do what they can to get by. They do what they have to. But "what they have to" is the problem. If we keep going on the track we're going, we'll be the first generation with a shorter lifespan than the last generation (our life expectancy is already less than that of our parents). We need dramatic changes, and not from individuals in the way of lifestyle; we need something bigger.


I agree with everything you've said except the bolded part. Why are we making a special exception for Sunday? Seems to me like malls and restaurants have as much reason to be open on Sunday as they do on any other day of the week.
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MelverneArkady



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  • #12
  • Posted: 06/21/2013 11:10
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swedenman wrote:
I agree with everything you've said except the bolded part. Why are we making a special exception for Sunday? Seems to me like malls and restaurants have as much reason to be open on Sunday as they do on any other day of the week.


Now I think about it, why does everything shut / close earlier on a Sunday? There is no point!
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Cymro2011
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  • #13
  • Posted: 06/21/2013 12:49
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EyeKanFly wrote:
Anything you want you can get at any time of the day, any time of the year. Need a hamburger at 11pm on Thanksgiving? go to the McDonald's down the road.


I for one am disgusted that there isn't a McDonalds down my road. I do have a Subway though...sigh it's not the same.
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meccalecca
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  • #14
  • Posted: 06/21/2013 14:02
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EyeKanFly wrote:
Oh and with the whole concern of obesity being a disease, I think you all might need to re-look at the definition of disease: "an abnormal condition that affects the body". Now of course even though obesity is completely "normal", it's still abnormal in terms of our biology. Our body isn't MEANT to be obese, and in that way it is abnormal.

Cholera's a disease, right? And you get that from ingesting human feces (unknowingly or otherwise). Alcoholism's a disease. So is lung and skin cancer. Cholera was an extreme example, but obesity, alcoholism, skin cancer, and (smoking-related) lung cancer are all "diseases" which can be avoided with a change in lifestyle. There's no guarantee there, there's genetic alcoholics who've only ever had one beer in their life; there's people who are extremely cautious with sunscreen and never go tanning and still have skin cancer; there's people who have never smoked who have lung cancer; and there are people who eat healthy and exercise who are still obese. They're all still diseases. I think if we were to revoke the decision to classify obesity as a disease, we would be further worsening the situation. Classifying obesity as a disease is a way to say that there's something wrong with obesity. If you have a disease, there's biologically something wrong with you. It's not necessarily something incurable, and it's not necessarily something that can only be cured with drugs, but it's still something wrong with the human body. And obesity is something wrong with the human body, so I think it should definitely still be classified as a disease.


Ok. you've convinced me. Obesity is a disease, but does that change anything really? The majority of Obesity is still a byproduct of an unethical corporate food culture, apathetic society, psychological disorder, and the declining physical nature of work.
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Bork
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  • #15
  • Posted: 06/21/2013 17:22
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I agree that laziness is an oversimplification and that a sedentary lifestyle may very well be a better term. Yes, it is the American (and increasingly European) lifestyle that causes the problem. But I still maintain that the lifestyle is one of laziness and one of personal choice. The reason fast food restaurants can be found in droves on every street corner is that it is quick and easy. If consumers chose healthier food that is what would be offered. The reason people don't exercise, while partly because the American society has been built around cars, is that it requires work. A lot of people are making a conscious choice not to walk when there is no other reason than...laziness.

Noone is arguing the exceptions. There are plenty of people who have a real medical condition that causes obesity no matter how hard they try. Again though, those are exceptions. More common are those who can't for their life understand why they are gaining weight while opening their fourth can of Mountain Dew of the day after returning from their super sized lunch at the McDonald's restaurant they drove to even though it is only half a block away. Often these people also argue that other people can do all that without gaining weight, so it must be out of their control.

Make no mistake. The reason obesity is now considered a disease by the medical community is money. If it is a disease that means insurance money will most likely be made available to treat the disease and more medication can be pushed onto an already ridiculously over-medicated population.

Classifying obesity as a disease, just like blaming the American way of life, does exactly what people are looking for. It shifts the responsibility and allows us to go on making bad decisions about what we eat, drink and do to stay in shape. Because hey...it ain't my fault. I'm sick.
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meccalecca
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  • #16
  • Posted: 06/21/2013 18:22
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Bork wrote:
Make no mistake. The reason obesity is now considered a disease by the medical community is money. If it is a disease that means insurance money will most likely be made available to treat the disease and more medication can be pushed onto an already ridiculously over-medicated population.

Classifying obesity as a disease, just like blaming the American way of life, does exactly what people are looking for. It shifts the responsibility and allows us to go on making bad decisions about what we eat, drink and do to stay in shape. Because hey...it ain't my fault. I'm sick.


The only reason this argument makes sense is because we understand that the majority of obese Americans are also incredibly poorly educated. Because no self-respecting intelligent adult would say "it ain't my fault, I'm sick."
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Jackwc
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  • #17
  • Posted: 06/21/2013 20:57
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meccalecca wrote:
I think I have the answer to that correlation.

The majority of the obese are located in red states, so when they lose an election they go straight into a diet of binge-drinking and eating. Or maybe it's just that during a Republican presidency the poor couldn't afford to eat anything at all.

But in all seriousness I'd love to see a chart showing the spikes. I truly believe that the effects of a presidency are long term, so results of governmental action may not really show until years later.




The major spikes seem to have occurred during the Obama and Clinton eras - I can't imagine why, I'd think if anything it'd be the opposite. I mean, how many obese Democrats do you see?
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meccalecca
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  • #18
  • Posted: 06/21/2013 21:06
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Jackwc wrote:


The major spikes seem to have occurred during the Obama and Clinton eras - I can't imagine why, I'd think if anything it'd be the opposite. I mean, how many obese Democrats do you see?


it's definitely a strange correlation. Could just be delayed effects of the previous presidencies as well. Or maybe the struggles thought Republican presidencies kept people from overeating. So many different elements at play. And god knows no one wants to play. they just wanna sit around a eat cheese balls while keeping up with the Kardashians
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  • #19
  • Posted: 06/21/2013 22:43
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MelverneArkady wrote:
Now I think about it, why does everything shut / close earlier on a Sunday? There is no point!


Religion. So yeah, no point.
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EyeKanFly
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  • #20
  • Posted: 06/25/2013 02:16
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swedenman wrote:
Religion. So yeah, no point.


To reply to this and earlier posts about why stores are open on Sundays: yes, closure on weekends/Sundays has its basis in religion. However, if everyone is off at the same day of the week (let's say Sunday) it gives more time for family, friends, hobbies, etc. It's healthy to be in a mental state of relaxation, and since work is often stressful, (mental) relaxation is difficult.

meccalecca wrote:
Ok. you've convinced me. Obesity is a disease, but does that change anything really? The majority of Obesity is still a byproduct of an unethical corporate food culture, apathetic society, psychological disorder, and the declining physical nature of work.


Um. Yes. I definitely agree with this. What's in bold is a good point that I myself didn't mention (which I should've).


Blaming the American(/wherever you live) way of life IS blaming ourselves. It's not shifting the blame to someone else. Typically it's largely the fault of the person who is obese. But it's also often the fault of the conditions they were raised in as well as their working environment.

meccalecca wrote:
The only reason this argument makes sense is because we understand that the majority of obese Americans are also incredibly poorly educated. Because no self-respecting intelligent adult would say "it ain't my fault, I'm sick."


No self-respecting intelligent adult would say "ain't" Laughing
Just kidding (not trying to make fun of regional dialects).
But I don't think the biggest problem (for individuals, not society) is that people are saying that it isn't their fault. I also don't think that the biggest problem is that people are unwilling to help themselves. I think the biggest problem is that people think that they CAN'T. There are self-respecting (I use that term loosely, because honestly, the majority of obese people I've met don't respect themselves; they're ashamed of their bodies, but I don't want to get into that) intelligent obese adults who genuinely think that they cannot fix their own bodies. Part of the reason is that once a person gets obese, exercising actually does have health risks (fainting, dehydration, stroke, heart attack), but part of the reason is that people are afraid of a change in lifestyle. So to some degree, it is "laziness", though a more appropriate term would be apathy, like you and others have said before. I've met obese people who have tried for years to eat healthy and exercise and (despite losing some weight) are still obese. This deters people from even trying to get healthy.

What people need to understand is that getting healthy is a very long process, and requires a total change in lifestyle. Eating healthy is hard. For the most part it requires cooking for yourself, which takes a lot of time. Exercising is hard. It also takes a lot of time. I think there's some that the government could do to encourage change (workplace health programs à la Japan; better bicycling infrastructure), but for the most part people just need to realize that they need to change, and it will take years. And even once they have changed, they need to keep going with their healthy lifestyle; they can't regress (which often happens after someone starts to lose weight). They also need family and/or friends who will support them throughout the process. Often instead of support, obese people get ridicule, anger, frustration, or apathy.

It's not just the obese who need to change. Everyone else needs to be supportive as well. This support often means joining in on the healthy lifestyle with your obese family member/friend. Eat what they should be eating. Exercise how they should be exercising. If you go out to a restaurant, don't order anything that your obese friend shouldn't be eating. Support by example, don't just criticize them for being fat. And don't be apathetic either. Even if you don't have any obese family members or friends, it's still important to be healthy, and if you're healthy, you're helping others around you to be healthy, and you're helping America (or wherever you live) to be healthy as well.


EDIT: Okay, so that last paragraph sounded really Rosie the Riveter-y...so sorry about that. But I do believe the message is important. To sum up my entire argument in a less "we can do it!" way: GET THE FUCK UP AND BE HEALTHY. And then once you're up, stay up. And stay healthy.
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