To think that unless caused by an underlying health condition, obesity..

[GraysAnalogy]

should not be classed as a disability?

Recent story about a childminder being sacked as he was too overweight to do his job properly. He took this to court for unfair dismissal and it is being argued that his obesity could be classed as a disability.

There has been no ruling yet.

In your opinion, should it?

kippersmum - my youngest daughter also has autism, it's so invisible nobody even noticed until we started seeing people at CAMHS for school refusal, depression, anxiety and so on but so disabling she too couldn't possibly go and buy a pint of milk and hasn't been able to access mainstream education for a long time

we are getting help though, she attends a medical unit where she can sit some GCSEs (missed all of yr 9 though) is working with a psychologist and has a support worker to do 'going out where peers might see her' which will hopefully get her to a point where she can go to a local shop - she might never find it quite as easy as someone who doesn't have the same social communication deficits but she can learn how to work round it to some extent (so the theory goes, it hasn't happened yet) - you might have to keep shouting at people until they cave in and offer some help?

Enpoid not sure I understand. If the tablets caused you to gain weight but you stopped taking them then they wouldn't be causing any subsequent weight gain. And if getting a regular amount of exercise through general walking about/climbing stairs was proving too difficult due to you being sore then that's also a medical condition isnt it? I was meaning that if your obese because you can exercise and eat clean but just chose not to / don't have the willpower then you can't really say it's a disability. It's self inflicted.

HelenaDove is right. I mentioned the 'eat less, move more' mantra in my earlier post, and should have qualified the 'eat less' part too.

I don't think it is necessarily about eating less, it is about eating differently. If I cut down on processed foods, sweets, cakes and high fat options, and fill up on fruit and vegetables, then this will reduce my calorie intake, and clean up my diet, and I should lose weight. In fact, purely in terms of bulk, I could probably eat far more veg - for example, a slice of Tesco finest chocolate cake has more than 11 times as many calories per 100g as broccoli.

So, since hunger is, in my opinion, the enemy of dieting for weightloss, it makes sense to fill up on things like broccoli, so you don't end up with the munchies, and diving into the biscuit barrel.

I understand why someone like kippersmum feels this decision is wrong, and I would agree that her dd needs the help and support far more than I do - all I am asking for is a little sympathy for people like me. I hate being the way I am, and hate myself for getting this way. I know where the psychological roots of my disordered eating are - and why I am so unkind to myself - and I have had a lot of therapy this year (not funded by the state, so the fat-haters don't have to worry about me taking away precious resources that someone more worthy could have used) to try to learn to like myself more, and be kinder to myself, and it has helped to some extent, but I am still at the beginning of a very long journey.

Burke, I'm not actually obese any more (BMI about 25). And I didn't feel that I was disabled due to obesity when I was. But if I had felt disabled when I was obese due to the side effects of the medication, and that was accepted as being a good enough medical excuse, then I wouldn't have suddenly stopped feeling disabled the moment I stopped taking the medication and was technically able to reverse my obesity.

(I know there are superior beings upthread who have managed to not gain weight on these drugs, but at one point while taking them I cut down to 800kcal a day for several weeks and didn't lose a pound. I'm not strong-willed enough to go lower than that.)

There aren't that many medical conditions or type of medication that make you so obese you can't work. People like that are in a minority.

The majority of obese people eat too much and don't move enough. (I include myself here).

People need to take some responsibility for their size and weight. You don't see people around the world as fat as the UK so it cannot be purely medically fat people.

If you are obese then the mechanisms which regulate energy balance have become damaged, possibly permanently. It's much harder for an obese or formerly obese person to regulate food intake (compared to a person of normal body composition who has never been obese) ?

People shouldn't hate themselves for what they weigh.

Or judge, hate or berate others for what they eat, unless they are 100% perfect in every way with nothing to be judged for.

Or even then tbh.

I don't understand why people think self-inflictedness is relevant to whether someone's disabled. If I chop my own legs off I have to use a wheelchair like all the other people with no legs.

I was staggered and depressed by the ruling. IMO it is deeply offensive to genuinely disabled people. Just more of the steady drip drip abnegation of personal responsibility for anything. 'It's not my fault'. Yes IT IS! Genuinely disabled people are not able to change their situation and would probably give anything to be able to. The obese, on the other hand, merely need to stop eating vast quantities of unhealthy food and get off their backsides and move a bit. I anticipate loads of aggressive feedback to this post, but sorry it's true….. No scientific intervention needed - the solution is really, really simple. Not fun, but not complicated either.

And I speak as someone who sometimes struggles with her weight. But I fully accept that is the result of my own greed and laziness from time to time and when I pile on the pounds it is up to me to take responsibility and do something about it - not moan and say 'poor me, it's not my fault'.

It's not offensive to disabled people. Your post is quite offensive to people who struggle with their weight though.

Surely most obese people are capable of working and of doing it well. I work, complete all my responsibilities to the same standard as colleagues and rarely have time off sick. If I was unable to perform my role because of any issue within my control I would have thought it reasonable for my employer to embark on some sort of procedure which could end in dismissal if not resolved in a reasonable time.

I thought this childminder case arose because he was unable to do parts of his job, namely stooping to tie shoes, which in my mind might also make him unable to pick up a child who had fallen, things on the floor that might affect safety, etc. Surely the employer should have raised concerns with him that he might not be doing the job to required standards, suggest how to address that and the possible consequences if he didn't.

I agree with those who say the adverse effects of obesity could be a disability for some but obesity alone is not. I would liken it to the effects of smoking (like COPD) are disabling but smoking in itself is not a disability

I am disabled - and I used to be overweight.
The reasons I have "reasonable adjustment" under the Equality Act at work is due to my disability, not being overweight. My job involves sitting at a PC all day so the fact that being overweight makes my feet and ankles hurt wasn't a huge deal.

However, because I knew there were issues I couldn't change but things I could - I decided to reduce my problems as much as I could by losing weight.

I still have a wonky spine, I still bruise at the drop of a hat, I still get spontaneously breaking of veins etc BUT I no longer have knee and ankle pain, I'm also 2 dress sizes smaller.

It is a pain in the arse really, I need to exercise 50 minutes a day for 6 days a week and watch my portion sizes. However, I think the benefits outweigh the problems. No longer do I sit on the sofa eating a bag of crisps and a load of chocolate in the evenings. Occasionally I do this, but not often.

It requires huge lifestyle changes - for instance the exercise means DH does most of the cooking and tidying in the evenings. It also requires a lot of motivation and will power on my part.

I'm still disabled but only now with the bits I can't change.
With obesity and even being in a crap relationship people often believe they can't make a difference - you can, but it's hard work and you have to train yourself out of bad habits and develop a whole set of new ones. Undoing habits of 40 years is TOUGH. It is also impossible to tell people how much better they will feel!

Oh, and a growing amount of literature studying people with gastric band surgery in the US shows that often, those treated, become addicted to something else after the surgery, so a significant proportion of obese people do have an addiction. This is being studied under "addictive personality" research.

burke some of these drugs seem to have lasting effects long after people stop taking them - my friend went from a size 8 to a 16 and continued gaining weight for several months after stopping olanzapine despite slimming world and working out vigorously (weights and cardio) for at least an hour five days a week - she did turn the corner and get back to a size 8 but the calories in calories out equation just did not stack up, there is obviously more to it, and of course it is not as achievable when someone spends several months of each year in an atypical depression where they mic less and eat more

nor has it made sense now after several cycles of chemotherapy and all the other lovely cancer treatments - you simply can't push yourself quite so hard in a spin class when you are depressed with your preexisting mood disorder and you have a giant hump on your back where a skin expander is helping you grow enough skin to have another operation after your radical mastectomy failed

anyway have carried out a LOT of research recently (every episode of supersize v superskinny, whichever season is currently on 4OD, fat: the fight of my life and obese: a year to save my life) and my conclusions are:

for most of the super obese quite intensive daily input from an understanding professional is needed in order to make the changes that sound so simple to most of us lasting and effective ones, supportive family and friends, a great deal of education/psychoeducation, emotional support where there are underlying dysregulation type issues, some scare tactics, access to motivational and non judgy physical activities, dramatic results at least in the beginning to get them through the shock of being separated from their deep fried sausage rolls or whatever

an average person trying to do it alone will be quite easily demoralised I think

telling people to eat less and move more hasn't worked has it? So the message is not effective unless it's delivered with resources and help to make it possible for people to succeed

I don't think every case of obesity results from some kind of ED, there are people who are really enthusiastic about food and that's been their pathway, paved with a bit of denial about their size and ushered along by an environment that is fully geared up for it

'ushered along by an environment that is fully geared up for it'

?^^Obesity is part of the zeitgeist

Re the Q posed by the OP, it depends on what we accept as the criteria for disability.
If to be considered you need to have a condition which is absolutely irreversible then I guess obesity is not a disability.

But what are the criteria for disability? ?

I don't think we even have a workable diagnostic identity for obesity yet - just applying a mathematical formula isn't enough, in fact it tells us very little

I asked (roughly) this question on the other thread, but why are you considering reversibility the criterion of whether something is a disability?

Disability is defined in the Equality Act as "a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities."

If reversibility were a criteria, you be claiming that someone with severe injuries from a car crash, isn't disabled for the say 5 years it takes them to recover enough to lead a normalish life. Wheelchair and notwithstanding.

Ditto someone waiting for a hip operation. Eg Carrie from ER - the spikey doc with a crutch. Was she not disabled for the first N series because she had an op in the last one and no longer needed the crutch?

Disability doesn't come in nice neat boxes of irreversible vs reversible, definitely not self-inflicted vs definitely self-inflicted, can't work vs can work.

I don't consider reversiblity a necessary criteria for disability but some on these threads seem to be arguing that obesity doesn't qualify as a disability because it is (in theory) reversible

but there are people out there who can't stop eating. it's a mental issue so the MH problem is the disability. Some people don't feel full, and eat out of boredom.
there are people who just eat and eat and eat and make themselves that big and i just think how can they let themselves get that big? why has no one tried to help them?
in some cases yes it is a disability as can cause illness and such but when a person is doing it out of boredom and laziness thats a whole other thing. there are people out there like that.
like the women who eat because men like them being massive (and I mean morbidly obese, fuck the BMI scale, a size 16 is not obese, a size 26 is, for example). its silly that they can let themselves be like that and can't be arsed to get rid of it.
then there are the people who are huge because "they can't afford healthy food", bullshit. a cauli floret is 59p. tomatoes are like 10 for £1. but a 25 bag packet of crisps is £4. where's the logic? it's laziness.
if anyone sees what i mean.

I think one of the problems is health professionals are so worried about offending people that they don't address the issue early enough. Overweight children, for instance. Given that children need energy to grow (as well as just exist) it actually takes quite a bit of effort for them to get properly fat. The parents of children who are fat should be encouraged to make changes in their family's diet. Then the problem would be dealt with earlier when it hadn't got to the morbid obesity stage. I think this stems from too much treading on eggshells around the issue in an attempt to be 'sensitive' .But the upshot is often that people who need help/intervention aren't given it when they should be. Having said that, I don't believe there is a person alive in this country who isn't aware of what a healthy diet looks like so you sort of just despair….

I don't believe there is a person alive in this country who isn't aware of what a healthy diet looks like

You'd be surprised. I did an NHS diet education course and other people on there had only the haziest idea of calorie counts, sugar content, etc. - most of them didn't realise honey was full of sugar and a lot were under the impression that olive oil is healthy because it's lower in fat than other oils, for example. Most of them couldn't tell you what protein was or what the three main types of fats were, or what proportion of the calories in your boiled egg and buttered toast soldiers comes from the egg (answer: not that much, considering the egg is the good bit). It just doesn't come onto people's radar as much as you'd imagine if you spent all your time around people who know more about nutrition.

Reversibility is nothing to do with whether a physical or mental impairment is a disability. If it is "long term" (more than 12 months), it is a disability. If it is on the prescribed list (cancer, HIV, MS etc) then it is a disability.

AND, if it is on the following list, it is NOT a disability under the Equality Act 2010:

Exclusions from the definition
A12. Certain conditions are not to be regarded as impairments for the purposes of the Act. These are:
• addiction to, or dependency on, alcohol, nicotine, or any other substance (other than in consequence of the substance being medically prescribed);
• the condition known as seasonal allergic rhinitis (e.g. hayfever), except where it aggravates the effect of another condition;
• tendency to set fires;
• tendency to steal;
• tendency to physical or sexual abuse of other persons;
• exhibitionism;
• voyeurism.