Obesity leads to some diseases, but sorry, I don’t go for the idea that it’s a disease in itself. Certainly there are some hormonal issues, drug side effects, etc which can cause obesity, but most obese people simply eat far more than they need to, eat the wrong kind of foods and don’t exercise.
Habits which start young. How you eat between the ages of 2 and 7 have a lot to do with setting a person’s metabolism for the rest of their life.
If you eat a high carb diet at that age, even if you change your diet later, your metabolic system will crave high carb foods — and many poor people live where it’s hard to find nutritious food but high carb high fat food is available at every fast food joint. Healthy foods are more expensive.
True, and there are some body types which gain weight more easily and some people who can eat a lot and stay skinny. So it definitely is more challenging for some people to keep extra weight off than others.
But I’ve seen the difference in how people eat and how it affects their weight. My neighbor is seriously overweight and her husband is a normal, healthy weight. I’ve gone over to visit when they were serving themselves lunch. They were eating the same thing, but she had twice as much food on her plate than he did.
Obesity / Overweight is certainly a problem in the USA. Most is lifestyle and choices. Otherwise, it would not be primarily an American issue. Real diseases do not care about country borders.
By making it “a disease”, it ties to big business: medical, insurance, pharma, etc. We can be sure that it took millions, many years and a lot of lobbying to make it happen. Such is our society.
Uh, what? Lots of nations have an obesity issue. Yes, we are higher on the list than many similar nations but other nations certainly have a problem, as in like over 25% obesity rate.
Maybe disease isn’t the best term but it’s definitely a health issue and like all health issues it has multiple causes. And like other health issues/diseases people shouldn’t be throwing stones because any one of us could end up being obese in an unfortunate turn of events.
A simple google search could save one some embarrassment.
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I don’t discriminate in my listing, but I kinda worry about the bed when I see a large guest.
So far, 4 years on, it seems to be coping and I have slept in it to check (not at the same time OF Course!!)
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Sorry that I was not as clear as my intent. Yes, there are people in various countries who are “overweight”. My thinking is more aligned to cases of severe or morbid obesity. The data is reasonably current:
https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/adult/defining.html
No stones … just a conversation.
Many airlines have obesity policies to help to prevent this. Perhaps more will join in? No one should have to endure it when paying good money for a seat. It’s such BS.
At the least, you should get a free flight voucher IMO.
That chart above is incorrect.
Mexico passed the United States as the most obese country in the world. The prevalence of overweight and obesity is 16.7% in preschool children, 26.2% in school children, and 30.9% in adolescents. For adults, the prevalence of overweight and obesity is 39.7 and 29.9%, respectively.
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The data is the data. Again, the chart is for severe obesity, not “mere obesity”. The story does not get any better for the USA with morbid obesity.
http://ncdrisc.org/, https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/prevalence-maps.html
USA: - Severe (Light Blue)
USA: - Morbid (Light Blue)
One of the big challenges in Amsterdam is stairs, especially in the classic canal houses. And very steep stairs sometimes too.
Our place here runs across 6 floors plus a cellar level. Our bedroom is on floor 5. We always warn prospective guests in stark terms to make sure they know what they’re signing up for.
That said so many stairs plus all that cycling is very good exercise. But I’m quite sure we won’t be living in this house forever as my knees won’t hold up forever lol
Care to provide research that this is true?
It is classified as a “disease” by the AMA (American Medical Association). It’s a positive thing because that is how treatments can get paid for by insurance. Without the classification, I couldn’t use a diagnostic code and bill for treatment for it. And people who are obese, clearly need some treatment. It also supports lap band surgery and the like, which is quite successful for some (my best friend included, he’s going on 10+ years with a 90 lb weight loss).
Overweight is defined as “weighing too much” (as you might guess ,) but Obesity is defined by having “too much body fat”. Both are about weighing more than is healthy for your height, but Overweight can be from muscle, bone, water, etc and not only body fat. Obesity always comes from consuming more calories than your body can use; however, there can be reasons that your body just doesn’t use calories effectively as from certain drugs or endocrine issues.
There are different diagnostic codes for different kinds (causes) of obesity, including: “post partum” and “drug induced” but the most common is “from excess calories”.
And while this is completely true and accurately reflected in the diagnosis and definition of “obesity”. It doesn’t make it not a disease. Just as “you don’t need to shoot heroin” doesn’t mean that Drug Abuse isn’t a disease (cause it is).
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No one WANTs to be overweight. I have yet to wake up, look in the mirror and say “oh goody, I’m fat”.
Obesity is complicated. For many it is a mental health issue just like depression and bipolar. It is not uncommon for victims of sexual assault to become overweight as a subconscious protection
It is amazing to me that people of average size happily insult heavy people in a manner that is considered abusive if it were about anything else.
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Whether it’s a disease or not doesn’t concern me (although I agree with
@Annet3176 that it is often an addiction - a mental health issue).
So leaving that aside, it simply strikes me as being a poor business decision to discriminate against anyone. A customer is a customer and like any other business, we need to make allowances for the fact that very few of our guests are going to be perfect.
If overweight or obese people exist in the world, then we should be able to accommodate them. Other businesses do and we aren’t special.
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I don’t consider it to be “insulting” to point out that most obese people simply consume more calories than they need to.
Why is okay to treat cigarette smokers as if they are undesirable lepers, rag on them for smoking and how much their habit costs the health care system, ban them from booking listings, yet act as if obese people are some protected class whose weight should be unmentioned and not an issue?
There is no valid reason why my neighbor needs to heap her plate with twice as much food as her husband eats. There is no valid reason why she needs to cook pots of soups and stews filled with sausages and dumplings and heavy cream. The only reason for all of that is that she likes to eat and likes those foods.
She told me she has no problem with her weight (she’s about 80 pounds more than a healthy weight) and I told her I appreciated that attitude because far too many women are obsessed about their weight and being skinny. But I also said that while I thought her attitude in accepting what she looked like was admirable, and what she looked like wasn’t of importance, her health was. She’s had to get both her knees done and she has high blood pressure- carrying all those extra pounds around certainly doesn’t help those issues.
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I just heard a story on the radio today — 2 Mexican states now only allow adults to purchase sugary soft drinks and snacks that are primarily carbs and salt.
Mexico as a whole is taxing soft drinks to pay for nutrition advertising and education. Mexico has the highest obesity level in the Americas.
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Yes, and more places in Mexico are considering it. Diabetes is a huge (pardon the pun) issue in Mexico. They have the highest consumption of Coca Cola in the world. It’s not at all unusual for a Mexican, be they an adult or child, to down a 2 litre bottle of Coke a day. Every day. They drink it like it was water. I’ve even seen people put Coke in the baby’s bottle.
There’s a lot of education that needs to take place here. One of my daughters also lives in Mexico, though quite far from me. When my grandson was about 5, they got invited to a Mexican neighbor boy’s birthday party. Not only was there cake and ice cream, there were giant bowls filled with candy and cookies, and of course, tons of soda pop. My daughter was sitting with the other Mexican mothers (she was the only gringa there) and made a comment about the sugar overload. The other mothers looked at her in a pitying way, as if she was ill-informed, and asked her if she wasn’t aware that candy is an “essential” part of a child’s diet?
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I don’t about “at that age” but there is a connection between carbs and metabolism.
No, you do your own research. It was a news story about a study by the BIA Indian Health Service. Native Americans and Polynesians have some of the highest rates of obesity, mostly due to poverty and lack of good food resources.