To think that people pretend not to understand obesity

You’re right but you get the same comments about every ailment or mental issue, apart from cancer or the other terminal ones

using your own analogy

An asthmatic may always need an inhaler. Even if they breathing and conditions are under control.

some may always need a maintenance dose of a WLI even if their weight and exercise is under control.

The only thing that I don't really understand is the never the twain shall meet element of these discussions.

Some people will blame medical conditions, psychological conditions, poverty, genetics, and pretty much anything that takes away any personal responsibility from an individual.

Some people will blame only the individual even when there are medical diagnoses that explain it.

The reality is that there will be some people who are obese because of medical conditions (either identified or not); some people will be so because of personal choices they freely make; in some people it will be an interplay of both to varying degrees.

There are so many factors.
I have never been overweight (I think a lot is to do with luck, or genes) but my mum was overweight virtually her whole life. I've seen pictures of her as a child/teen in the 50s/60s. She was overweight then, so were both her parents, so was her brother. At her wedding she probably wasn't overweight but likely at the upper end of bmi.
They didn't have a car growing up, they didn't eat upfs, but all were overweight.
I think her genes potentially predisposed her to be overweight.

It's a genuine question. I've never been underweight (I put that down to enjoying my food too much) and I'm curious as to how and overweight person becomes underweight.

@Winifredtabago

is that what you’re focussing on? “If you can go underweight, you could have stayed there?”

🤣🤣🤣

bless you. Not point trying to show you the complexity. Carry on with your ignorant bliss x

Well, everyone has told her she is all her life I expect, and she can see her daughter thinks the same. Why would someone eat a whole loaf they don’t want?

Yes - and I heard a BBC piece on research into genetic influences. I can’t remember the details but the message was that people who have this issue face a huge battle - and that those who don’t are so much more fortunate. It is not a case of willpower in some and weakness in others.

The ignorance is real.

So, besides eating more calories than you expend (with some physical and health conditions excluded) what is there that is misunderstood? Surely overeating is no different to smoking or drinking too much alcohol; it's unhealthy but you can't help it....so it's probably addiction-related.

She'd be the first to put her hands up and say she's greedy. So I'll have to go with that.

What caused you to go underweight?

@Winifredtabago

i started gaining weight at 5… the only fat person in a thin family.

i was put on appetite suppressants age 8 (sadly true - 1970s).

the doctor made a note of me weighing 11 stone aged 11 - “keeping up with your age?”. I was 5ft 1.

i’m now late 50s. I’ve yo-yo’d from underweight to very very overweight my whole life.

I’ve run marathons,
cross-fit, been a couch potato, and everything in between.

No thyroid or identifiable reasons for it.

Mounjaro has made me a different person.

do you think I just wasn’t trying hard enough?

There are people who have genuine medical reasons for being overweight and there always have been.

A friend of my mum's was always slim until she had steroids for infertility in the 80s. She became very big while her diet hadn't changed at all.

But these medical reasons don't and won't apply to everyone or even the vast majority. There hasn't been a huge medical crisis in the last 40 years. Its a dietary one. The availability of crap food. A lack of understanding around crap food. And a lot of people.just like the taste of it (no matter how crap it is) and want to eat it.

The way UPFs are designed, they trick your brain.

It's not real food and your body doesn't recognise it as real food, which is why the normal 'full' or 'enough' triggers don't work.

I could eat a whole medium sized dominos pizza by myself in one sitting. And have done. I couldn't eat that amount of food of something I'd made myself from scratch because I'd be full after the equivalent of 2 or 3 slices. If I ate the equivalent of a whole dominos pizza to myself for one of my meals every day, I'd be obese too. And some people do.

And are still hungry because that's how those foods work.

And there's just no getting away from that.

And I say that as someome who has been 'very overweight' although not obese; someone who is related to people who are/have been both obese and slim; and someone who has lived with people who are/have been both obese and slim.

In no case were there any 'medical' reasons for the differences in size. But a huge difference in terms of food choices and quantity of food consumed.

I’m happy to say that you’re very uneducated!!!!

if you spent as much time understanding GLP-1s as you have asserting such rubbish, you’d see that they are hugely helpful for people to gain clarityover ‘normal’ eating patterns and learn how to break habits/learn mechanisms to address reasons for overeating that may have existed.

I tend to go with the NHS website when it comes to understanding a lot of illnesses etc. Obesity is talked about on the NHS website and it definitely makes mention of the section of people who are overweight due to medical conditions. Even fairly common things like under active thyroid.

It's 28/29% of the UK population are obese, so nowhere near 75% . Up to 64% are overweight (including those who are clinically obese) but I really don't know how they measure that. People with medical conditions obviously don't account for all of that percentage, but they're not a distraction. They exist and should be acknowledged, rather than being brushed aside, or, worse, disbelieved and made to feel worthless. I do object to people spouting nonsense about it but sadly, armchair experts and dilettantes have very loud voices because as they say, empty vessels make most noise.

And it's sad to think its happening with more and more kids these days. One thing I definitely miss about being a kid is having the flexibility and energy to be running about and playing all the time. I've seen kids out of breath after only brief play (and not due to asthma or similar).

Me too. We had a pretty healthy diet, too. Father shot a lot of what we ate. So wild fowl, homemade food.

Sorry to hear you were overweight so young!

Why do you think your mum would eat all the bread then? Does she want to? No. That’s why she doesn’t buy it, because if it were there she would. It’s a compulsion.

Ok but you have to admit being in extreme pain when moving is not likely to be the common factor in why the majority are overweight. We're not saying everyone who is overweight is like that due to overeating or lack of exercise.

Food doesn't have the same physiological effects on the body as drugs, alcohol and tobacco.
Just because you want it to be a fact, doesn't make it so.

To be honest, yoyo dieting. I've been on diets almost all of my adult life.

I first lost weight when I was 11 and it's been more or less constant since then. I can't naturally maintain a healthy weight without cutting down to an unrealistic level and then when I return to a normal calorie intake, (1500ish cals) I put on weight again.

Doesn't matter how much I exercise. At one crazy point, I was gyming before and after work in an attempt to attempt to stabilise my weight.

I was very lucky to have a good GP who supported me and recognised it was a genuine problem, rather than some sort of binge eating disorder.

No, they often don't.

I thought I was a lazy arsehole and a picky eater. Despite being very active during childhood/early teens (basically when I had no actual choice, and the access to activities i really enjoyed).

I was avoiding exercise due to extreme pain (Ehlers Danlos), and 'picky' due to ARFID. Having the pain removed and understanding why I eat the way I do made it so much easier to address things.

Unfortunately by that point the damage of forcing myself to move and do things that hurt was done, my back is fucked, my heart is fucked, I take a cocktail of meds to stay basically upright and vaguely functional (in my power wheelchair).

I thought I was weak, I genuinely thought that everyone was in pain standing up/walking, they were just stronger/more stoic than me.

I realise that sounds absolutely ridiculous now but I was 23 when it dawned on me that other people were not forcing themselves to move through awful pain, because this crept up through childhood, slowly getting worse. It was my normal and it wasn't until I a/got on the right pain meds and b/got a manual wheelchair that I realised this wasn't right.