Is being Obese an illness?

[agel]

Yes or No
Im really not trying to start an argument. I want to understand what people actually think/know/believe about this.

I am obese and am trying to gain some sort of control over my eating through therapy at the moment. I’ve tried diets and exercising that do work but long term I don’t seem to be able to change my lifestyle enough to keep the weight off. I hate living like this and how people treat me differently because of my size. My family don’t understand at all. My partner is not understanding and it’s seriously affecting our relationship in many ways. It seems unfair because I don’t feel I have much control over this. It’s actually very lonely being in this situation. I rarely mention the topic of my health or weight to others because pardon the pun it’s always the elephant in the room! But you can almost hear what people are thinking. I hate the judgemental looks and comments. I rarely go out now because of anxiety and panic attacks brought on by this situation.

Have you tried weight Loss Injections? They have changed my life; in a good way.

I agree with you. I also don’t think obesity is a disease or a symptom of illness.

I'm no expert, but something around compulsive behaviour, I'd imagine. I think it's clear it's not as straightforward as knowing what you should be doing re food and exercise or a simple lack of willpower.

@Redfluffyblanket like a form of OCD?

I find it interesting that when taking a medication like Mounjaro I am able to exercise that self control and have no compulsion to over eat.

Yes neither do I think it's a disease. I think i said that in my first reply to OP. I'm with the poster who talked about it being used as a profitable entity but after thought I also think it might be useful to medical professionals to class it as 'something' so that they can look at ways of treating it. It is a risk factor for many other health issues. We have eg obesity clinics etc. Which wouldn't make sense if it was just a weight category.

Strict rationing would drastically reduce or virtually eliminate mass obesity. The general population would become significantly healthier without a modern diet of UPF.

They’re also very selective about the bits of WHO info they quote!

Absolutely.

What do you mean become? UPFs are going nowhere.

The World Health Organisation has been known to be wrong!

In an ‘ideal world’ UPF would be eliminated!

Obesity is not an illness but struggling to maintain a healthy weight because of physical and/or mental problems can be considered an illness.

I think strict rationing is probably a bit of a hard sell @scoutzx How were you hoping to get that implemented?

It’s potentially a symptom of an illness or syndrome or side effect of treatment. Being very overweight is often connected to conditions but it’s not an illness it’s self, it’s the result of illness/treatment

Which is precisely why it's a useless thing to talk about. It's better to talk about the world we have and potential solutions. Neither the removal of UPFs or rations are realistic. Are you trolling?

Labelling it leads to people not being accountable and using ‘I can’t help it’ to excuse their weight.
People don’t get fat from eating huge salads do they?

A government might introduce it if their was a severe food shortage.

No, I’m not a troll!!

They could - it would be harder, but they could.

200cals extra a day - if they had a bread roll with that salad, or an extra tablespoon of mayo and a banana afterwards. That's all it takes to put on a kilo a month. And if you don't feel fullness, you have to manually figure that out. When you can have an apple, when you can have cheese on toast, whether you can have a splodge of ketchup, or a couple of biscuits with your tea.

Yep, say if there was a war. But... there's no chance of that is there? Or is there!

No unless said huge salads contains more calories than you might expect. Obviously. As PP wrote earlier, you really don’t have to eat massively over your TDEE to steadily put weight on. And if you do not feel that your meal has satisfied you, it is easy to have, say, an extra couple of spoons of rice or whatever.

Cross post with what you’ve said here!

To put this in perspective, I've been very overweight my whole life - toddler upwards. I've always been a walker (I walked 2 miles to school every day in secondary, and a mile in primary), I cook from scratch, I don't have biscuits or cakes in the house, I drink in strict moderation. I walk, do pilates and lift weights and always have to varying extents - and the only times I've lost weight are when literally starving myself (fast 800), when running/walking 6k/day (lockdown to get out of the house), glandular fever (couldn't physically eat) and mounjaro.

I didn't put on weight in my pregnancies, my blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol are all well within healthy levels, I sleep well, have no physical issues at all - I'm just fat. And I'm fat because I eat too much, and I eat too much because I have no feedback to tell me when I've eaten enough, so I have to guess.

Wouldn’t you look in the mirror and see that you are fat, or that your clothes are too tight and don’t fit you anymore?

It's a symptom of a complex disease which has a variety of causes. Mainly hormonal, occasionally mental. Fix the cause and the symptoms reduce. How easy the cause is to identify and fix is unclear.

Take WLI as an example - work brilliantly in some, suggesting hormonal imbalances are causing improper hunger cues and insulin difficulties. Don't work in others, which suggests their obesity has a different underlying cause.