The stupid explodes: obesity now a disability

marplots said:
I immediately thought it meant we could solve a country's starvation problem by shipping them birth control pills. Those starving kids don't need to eat more, they only need to retain more of what they eat.
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Brilliant!
 
Jono said:
That's another odd and off-the-wall claim. The only way? I'm not disagreeing that dietary habits are a major factor but... do you know how many people I've known who've gained lots of weight by taking birth-control pills, psycho-pharmaca et al without overating?
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I think it's a terminology thing. Overeating in rustypouch's sense meant eating more calories than expending. Far from a 'myth'. The challenge is for people to understand why they do that, and develop strategies to mitigate it.

The introduction EDIT: "of" medication side effects as a refutation to calorie balance models does not work. What the medications appear to do is alter the way the person responds to the environment, meaning it causes them to eat more or burn fewer calories.

This is a non-environmental influence, for sure, but a person can still address it with personal agency.

I actually find these individuals interesting, as many did not have weight problems prior to using their prescriptions, and it's apropos this thread. Many of these people associated their thinness as an example of their superior willpower compared to those who were heavier. Suddenly, they're struggling with their weight. Their personal willpower has not changed. Often, they respond by increasing their willpower, having never really used personal agency to manage their weight before. So they're only 25lb overweight instead of 40lb, for example.

Most come around to the understanding that while being overweight may mean they're not exercising enough willpower to be thin, that it doesn't reveal they're exercising more or less willpower than somebody who is thin. Weight just isn't a proxy for willpower.



Jono said:
I've gone through this already. Feel free to ignore Linda Bacon, whoever that is, I didn't find her listed in the study I linked to except as a partial author of one of the 28 sources given by that study (which had crickets shirping in this thread regarding its data). All woo? Hmm, you're propogating a very harmful myth is what you're doing, when you say things like that. At least that's the way it comes across.
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I think there were crickets chirping because the citation didn't seem to refute the subject matter. It felt like you're misunderstanding our claim and it's a 'but this one goes to eleven' conversation.
 
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blutoski said:
The introduction EDIT: "of" medication side effects as a refutation to calorie balance models does not work. What the medications appear to do is alter the way the person responds to the environment, meaning it causes them to eat more or burn fewer calories.
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Jono: I've been trying to understand your claim for awhile now, and I think you're interpreting the claim that obesity is caused by overeating as identical to the claim that obesity is caused by choosing to overeat. This is not the same claim.

For the most part, overeating is probably a lack of choosing in general. Most people are not really paying attention to the calorie consumption. Arguably, this is a choice too, but it's different than any deliberate choice to overeat.

This is the core of most research into weight management, and the reason Dr. Wansink titled his book "mindless eating" - mostly we're not choosing to overeat, undereat... we're not choosing to reduce our eating triggers... we're just following habits and responding to environmental cues, many of which are intended to make us consume more calories.



As an example, my cat was losing weight dramatically due to hyperthyroidism, so we've put him on a topical methimazole. This is a pretty clear cut example of a drug side effect impacting metabolism and ultimately calorie balance.

He gained weight until he achieved the target weight, and we have recently reduced his kibble and treat calories to maintain that healthy weight. I have to be the food gatekeeper because he has a brain the size of a walnut and no capacity to understand the concept.



So yes: our weight management has a physiological element. But we're not dumb cats. We can understand what's happening. With this in mind... one model I suggest could work for some people is to imagine their eating impulses as the behavior of the Id-like "animal" part of us, and for our Ego to use its agency to take responsibility for trying to mitigate the Id's influence on what we eat.



ETA: and an important component of mitigating overeating is accepting that we're not as in control as we think, so have to alter the environment. We respond to environmental cues somewhat unconsciously no matter how strongwilled we are. We're not making as many choices as we want.

In principle, skeptics are fine with this, but there's a second level that many skeptics haven't crossed yet, and things can go from bad to worse. Specifically, many skeptics think that being aware of manipulation makes us immune to it. It doesn't, and we have to go a level up and eliminate the manipulation whenever possible.
 
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blutoski said:
I think it's a terminology thing. Overeating in rustypouch's sense meant eating more calories than expending. Far from a 'myth'. The challenge is for people to understand why they do that, and develop strategies to mitigate it.

The introduction EDIT: "of" medication side effects as a refutation to calorie balance models does not work. What the medications appear to do is alter the way the person responds to the environment, meaning it causes them to eat more or burn fewer calories.

This is a non-environmental influence, for sure, but a person can still address it with personal agency.

<snip>
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Exactly. I doubt there's anyone who will debate that certain medications can affect appetite, satiety response, etc. The munchies is a well known side effect of smoking marijuana, for example.

The basics are pretty simple, but the implementation can be very tricky. There's all sorts of psychological issues, as well as issues surrounding knowledge of diets, and the fact that people in general tend to be terrible at self reporting.
 
rustypouch said:
Exactly. I doubt there's anyone who will debate that certain medications can affect appetite, satiety response, etc. The munchies is a well known side effect of smoking marijuana, for example.

The basics are pretty simple, but the implementation can be very tricky. There's all sorts of psychological issues, as well as issues surrounding knowledge of diets, and the fact that people in general tend to be terrible at self reporting.
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I'd add external issues as well. I think the answers are pretty straightforward, but there's a lack of political will and there are expensive and very competent FUD campaigns to make weight management look either simpler (willpower! carbs! HFCS! Aspartame!) or more complicated (this week they say X, today they say Y... scientists don't really know anything!) than it really is.

I think the main reason there's poor understanding about this subject is that it's the product of a deliberate effort from motivated parties.
 
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Jono said:
Of course, 'cause how would you then be able to yell "get out of the couch you disgusting fatso" with good conscience? :rolleyes:
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The number and size of the strawmen you're posting in this thread makes me think you may have some personal agenda going on.

I struggle to think of any other reason you'd bother.
 
blutoski said:
I'd add external issues as well. I think the answers are pretty straightforward, but there's a lack of political will and there are expensive and very competent FUD campaigns to make weight management look either simpler (willpower! carbs! HFCS! Aspartame!) or more complicated (this week they say X, today they say Y... scientists don't really know anything!) than it really is.

I think the main reason there's poor understanding about this subject is that it's the product of a deliberate effort from motivated parties.
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I find the effort from motivated parties fascinating. Particularly, the research by fast food and snack companies about how people respond to flavour and mouthfeel, and the balance of salt, sugar, and fat in processed foods. Things that people crave, but were rarely found together in nature.
 
rustypouch said:
I find the effort from motivated parties fascinating. Particularly, the research by fast food and snack companies about how people respond to flavour and mouthfeel, and the balance of salt, sugar, and fat in processed foods. Things that people crave, but were rarely found together in nature.
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There's that, but I'm thinking more about the public confusion created by their FUD campaigns. The sugar marketing boards in the USA, Canada, UK, for example, have invested a great deal of money into manufacturing concern about the health impacts from HFCS and Aspartame. Their inventions have more or less become common knowledge. That's pretty impressive, and in particular their deliberate and constant association of Aspartame with health risk has direct implications for obesity management.

Some people consider comparing tobacco manufacturers to food and beverage producers unfair, but I disagree. They are using exactly the same techniques, and I don't think it's a coincidence: I think their strategists paid close attention to tobacco's death spiral and don't want that to happen to their industry.

ETA: they may also be learning from dietary supplements. Skirting the boundary of legal health claims, and portraying rival products as literally toxic.


All that is independent of their internal proprietary findings about what makes people try their products for the first time, eat more of their products, and what makes return customers.
 
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Actually, it is a simple decision easily made. It's the follow through that is the tough part.

Question for the skinny folks out there that "can't understand how a person can let themselves get THAT fat"- How well is your follow through on New Year's Resolutions? Exercise program? Procrastination? Quitting smoking? Cut down on alcohol? Pot? Eat more greens?
 
casebro said:
Actually, it is a simple decision easily made. It's the follow through that is the tough part.

Question for the skinny folks out there that "can't understand how a person can let themselves get THAT fat"- How well is your follow through on New Year's Resolutions? Exercise program? Procrastination? Quitting smoking? Cut down on alcohol? Pot? Eat more greens?
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I'm thin and I fail on all those that apply to me.

I've ever asked for compensation because of my failures.
 
marplots said:
I'm thin and I fail on all those that apply to me.

I've ever asked for compensation because of my failures.
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I've never considered disability support a form of compensation, do you? And do any of those things disable you from functioning in society? If not then I'm really not sure of the point you're trying to make.
marplots said:
I'm thin and I fail on all those that apply to me.

I've ever asked for compensation because of my failures.
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Once you actually made it... That suggests to me that getting to that decision was relatively complex, which kind of goes against the idea that it was simple. A rather tortured analogy might be to apply it at a planetary level (its my go to point of reference, as an environmentalist, bear with me) making the decision to not produce carbon emissions is pretty simple, but negotiating the minefields of conflicting interests is actually pretty complex.
 
bit_pattern said:
I've never consider disability support a form of compensation, do you? And do any of those things disable you from functioning in society? If not then I'm really not sure of the point you're trying to make.
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I didn't create the analogy between New Year's resolutions and the inability of people to lose weight, I was just extending it to reflect the difference between my failures to accomplish goals and the thread topic.

Are disability payments a form of compensation? I didn't consider the difference, and in light of the analogy, whichever term works, that's fine.

The point is that we all sometimes fail at achieving our objectives - even when those objectives are achievable. Losing weight seems to me to be more in that category (New Year's resolution), than in the category of having an amputated limb, for example. We wouldn't say, "This year I resolve to not be quite so sightless."

Clearly there's a range of what we take "disabled" to mean.
 
marplots said:
I didn't create the analogy between New Year's resolutions and the inability of people to lose weight, I was just extending it to reflect the difference between my failures to accomplish goals and the thread topic.

Are disability payments a form of compensation? I didn't consider the difference, and in light of the analogy, whichever term works, that's fine.

The point is that we all sometimes fail at achieving our objectives - even when those objectives are achievable. Losing weight seems to me to be more in that category (New Year's resolution), than in the category of having an amputated limb, for example. We wouldn't say, "This year I resolve to not be quite so sightless."

Clearly there's a range of what we take "disabled" to mean.
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We don't offer to meet the needs of people who are disabled because they failed to achieve an objective, we do it because they are disabled. Do you think denying the means for survival to someone who can otherwise not function as an able bodied person in society would aid them in meeting a given objective?

Clearly there's a range of what we take "disabled" to mean.
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Not really, I think the meaning is very clear:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disabled

disabled

dis·a·bled (dĭs-ā′bəld)
adj.
: having a physical or mental disability : unable to perform one or more natural activities (such as walking or seeing) because of illness, injury, etc
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The only point of contention is the moral judgements around the deserving disabled and the undeserving disabled.
 
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