How I believe WE sometimes perpetuate negative opinions of obesity

 I find this very interesting, and I also thank you for sharing!

I want to also clarrify that i 1000)% believe that obesity is NOT a moral failing.  We totally agree on that.  I think it's interesting what you say about alcoholism or addiction.  

I believe I did have either an addiction or disorder of some sort.  In the true sense of the word, and that surgery helped me detox, and has helped me want to stay 'clean' of a lot of those trigger foods.

I do NOT have an 'all things in moderation' mind frame. There are some foods I am an all or nothing for - I know I have to be.

For me, it was empowering to know that i COULD do something about my obesity, that I had control over my actions.  I think I'm just jaded by the word 'disease', I need to find a way to get over that lol

Prior to my comments, I hope you realize I wasn't upset! I like a good discussion of all sides of the issue.

To be honest I don't quite get where you are coming from about disease, but that doesn't negate where you are coming from or make it less in some way, perhaps because the word "disease" just isn't a big one in my sphere. It could be that as a teacher, due to the fact that I spend most of my time with kids, perhaps the sort of work environment where people are all adults (and, y'know, as we get older we do have a greater likelihood of disease, sad fact'o'loife)... perhaps people discuss disease in a way that I'm unaware of.

I do live a strangely public and conversely private ilfe. My hubby is my best friend, and we really spend our time together. Maybe not the way some people do it. But it's what we do. We also work at the same place, so we're living in each other's pockets so-to-speak. I really don't socialize much with adults. I'm on public performance every day in my job, but go home to a private little personal paradise to which few are invited.

What's strange to me is that I KNOW that obesity is NOT a moral failing, but I don't really KNOW it. Deep down inside there is a part of me that is ashamed of that inability to do it alone. (the point of this thread). I forgive OTHERS. I see others as being proactive and grabbing hold of the reins of their life and empowering themselves by taking charge of their health and future. I know I did the same. I even FEEL empowered for having TAKEN control of my health. And yet in the background, I feel like somehow it's a sign of my weakness that I needed it. I'm following the rules and I'm gaining, what moral failing now?  (of course, I've been fluctuating 5 to 10 pounds a NIGHT right now. I told hubby this morning, "WE NEED A NEW BATTERY for hte scale" Because I can't gain 10 pounds in 2 days, after losing it the week before. I'm just jumping up down and all over the place. So it must be the scale. But stilll..... deep down there is a sense that I'm the weak link for MY weight loss (or lack, or gain).

As far as moderation. I'm more for it, but I did declare the two primary sources of daily massive calories off-limits. Reeses Peanut Butter Cups  and full sugar Coca Cola. To me being absolute about a lot would be a recipe for disaster. But being absolute about TWO things.... I can do that. I still eat chocolate. (dark) and about three times in four and a half years I've had a full-sugar soda (once as it was all that was available to drink and I was having heat exhaustion, twice it was a treat on two different christmases - one full-sugar rootbeer each of two consecutive christmases - the last sugar soda was over two and a half years ago, now that I think about it)
 
But "moderation" along with my "single digit" sugar grams, and 25 gram total carb rules for my consumables? Well ultimately I don't eat a wide variety of foods. (quiche, yoghurt, cheese, artichoke hearts, snap peas, dark chocolate on occasion)

Do most diseases happen with no choice or control on the part of the individual?

I'm thinking that really, most diseases are probably caused by a combination of factors, some we can control, some we can't.  And I'm thinking obesity is probably the same way, at least most of the time.

I started gaining weight when I was severely depressed.  I don't believe I had control over the depression.  I did have a choice about whether or not to seek treatment, and I did seek treatment, but for a period of several months, the depression was very severe even with treatment.  Due to the depression, grocery shopping and preparing healthy meals was very difficult for me.  Did I have control over whether or not I ordered a pizza to be delivered?  Sure I did.  but did I have any good alternatives?  Not really, unless I just wanted to not eat.  I could not control the fact that I was too sick to go shopping and I could not control the fact that there were no grocery stores that delivered to my neighborhood.

Sorry, I'm not in agreement with most people's opinions on this thread. But that's the great thing, we don't have to agree about our philosophies and theories of obesity cause, classification, mental affect or defect, shame, guilt, anguish, pride, consequences or whatever.

It's a wonderful space where we reside on-line. Even more wonderful that we can disagree and yet retain the respect we have for each other and the processes we use to achieve our goals.

 Christina I love you but I gotta call you out. You just said a lot without saying absolutely anything.

What don't you agree with? It's ok to say you know... And I am actually interested to hear your opinion. I may not agree with it but I'm grown. I can handle it. :)

You.  Are.  The. Best.

   I dont' take out a billboard about my surgery, but if someone comments on my weight loss I tell them.   It is well known throughout my VERY large workplace and I am fine with that.  I work very hard to learn to make this work for me and I have no shame in it.

I kept it quiet because one of the other teachers on my campus had it, and I kept hearing the principal, asst. principals, superintendant, and asst. superintendants mentioning how "Ever since she had WLS she's totally unreliable" (she broadcast it to the world). I had an important summer job we couldn't do without (netted approximately $7,500 each summer) that had one staple ingredient, and that was that I be RELIABLE. (and I have been, over 9 years of leading summer school and haven't missed a day) But if they KNEW I was going to have that surgery they might have given the job to someone else.

And once I made that decision, I kept to it. I do speak openly and with knowlege about it. Often I say "I visit an online forum for people trying to lose weight an keep it off, and a lot of them have had WLS" and I discuss the virtues and drawbacks of surgery  etc.

Another teacher recently shrank from what looked like a visual 400 lbs or so down to about 150 lbs with "exercise".... I'm pretty darn sure, given the speed of her weight loss, that it was weight loss surgery.... but I accept her need to keep it to herself also. (she works in the same dept as the vocal one and probably heard more varied complaints about the "unreliable" one)

Now, it's interesting to me to be a "thin" person. new teachers who only know me thin, they comment on a five pound loss and it's weird to be a thin person on whom a 5 pound loss is obvious. They're always shocked when they see some of my "fat" photos.

I agree with you strongly, and I know I fall into the trap from time to time. I kept my surgery to myself for fiscal reasons, and NOT for any reason of shame. At the time, I'd hoped to be living elsewhere by now, and freely sharing my issues without any cir****pection, but alas, our house is mortgaged for twice it's ccurrent value, and the only way to get out of here is to wait out the slump or walk away.

Sometimes I'm guilty of sort of minimizing the actual medical nature of the surgery, but frankly for me, it really was the only solution that ever worked. Seeing my mother die of an obesity-related cancer knocked me on the head, made me realize that if I only wanted at most 15 years prior to being so sick that life lost most of its meaning (if I followed my mother's course).... I didn't want that. I didn't want my 60th birthday party to be a sort of pre-death funeral/wake. 60 is young, but my mom looked 90. She made it to a month past her 61st birthday (against all odds)

Obesity is a disease. There is NO shame in treating a disease.

90% of the issues we see "you took the easy way out" .... is because too many people have a variety of moral sins that they consider are a problem with our country. Obviously it's a moral sin to murder people, pedophilia is also a horrible awful no good sin, gambling, addiction, lying, adultery.... and gluttony. But only the "sin" of gluttony is readily apparant to anyone with eyeballs that work. People see two people standing in front of them, two men, let's say, and one is obese, and the other has his mom's dessicated corpse sitting in rocking chair at the window.... society sees a sinner in the fat person, and the thin person if, the observer had to choose which individual was more morally decrepit, ON LOOKS ALONE.... they'd choose the fat person as having a moral sin of gluttony. A fault of character. Comparing the two most casual observers would not see the rotten soul of the murderer.

As a society popular comedians still joke about obesity because it's popularly considered a moral sin. You can make fun of sinful behavior. Comedians don't make jokes about chemotherapy. Or child-onset diabetes. Or about being amputated at the knees because of an IED. Those are more or less forbidden topics. But not obesity.

In addition, if the casual observer looks at two individuals -- lets say two women, one bone slender, and one super morbidly obese -- and asks which one eats more calories in a day, and by how much, they'll look at the fat person and say "That person eats ten times as much as the other" even though in reality, the thin person eats ten times as much as the fat one. But the thin person is not morally guilty of the sin of gluttony, and the fat person is. Ultimately that is what the issue is. People are judgemental. They see obesity as a sin, and they think that WLS is doing an end run around becoming a virtuous non-gluttonous person..... People who have WLS (they think) have done something to their bodies so that they can continue their gluttonous behavior and avoid the consequences.

I do believe that we, as individuals that have had WLS, can be (but shouldn't be obliged to be) ambassadors of information. Sharing the difficulty of this procedure, the fact that it is about a disease. Explaining that the level of self control is GREATER than the larger un-altered populace can help people learn that WLS does NOT equal EASY, nor does it mean UNCONDITIONAL gluttony, and it certainly doesn't mean a license to eat ANYTHING. It's about education.

When my sister suggested (timidly) to me that I should look into WLS, (I mentioned that I was thinking of dieting, and was 350 lbs)..... I was a little bit receptive. She shared the awful statistics that the disease of obesity, for the super-morbidly obese, has a VERY small cure rate for non-surgical intervention. (something like only 5% can get down to goal, and keep 50% off for 5 years as the definition of success/cure). She poiinted out gently (and she's not normally a sensitive [or sensible] person) that my chances of success were pretty teeny tiny. She suggested I look into WLS. I didn't want to. I didn't want to stop eating. I didn't want to throw up all the time. I had evolved from my earlier understanding that WLS was the "easy way out" because I knew someone who had it, got thin, and was throwing up all the time.

But I promised to look into it and the rest, you know, is history.

If the TRUTH behind WLS (as a cure for an awful deadly disease) was commonly known, then I doubt I would have waited almost until I was 40.

YES! I have been thinking of this all afternoon but unable to post. Obesity is indeed characterized as a moral failing by some people.

My husband and I just had a rousing discussion about this. He, never having been obese, and despite living with me for 19 years, still has the impression that if obese people wanted to do something to help themselves, they could. That somehow remaining obese is laziness and thumbing one's nose at the world. Even though he has had his own struggles with tobacco, he still does not understand how difficult it can be to change one's behavior.

I said to him that fat discrimination is one of the last publically acceptable prejudices, and I truly believe that. 

This particular discussion we had was inspired while we watched the movie Lbs on Netflix. Thought provoking movie about an obese man struggling to make a change.

Even worse because of success levels. I honestly tried everything I could to diet... some exercise (admittedly not a lot) starvation, grapefruits only, yoghurt only.... everything I could think of. I couldn't lose more than 5 or 10 pounds and it came back seemingly overnight. When you try everything you can think of and nothing works, eventually you stop trying. I stopped trying for a LONG time. I accepted myself as FAT NOW, FAT ALWAYS. It was ingrained. It was not a temporary description, but it was an integral part of my self-identification. White. Female. Short. Fat. Something I couldn't change.

It's insane to keep trying when all efforts have resulted in failure (for some it was successful but never permanent. For me it was never really successful). I fully admit I had some gaps in my knowlege that -- had I known them when merely overweight - I likely would have overcome. But knowing them when you're a BMI of 60 means you've sort of passed the threshold where diet and exercise alone can do it.

But even our loved ones who live with us can't really understand. I met and married hubby when I was somewhere between 250 to 300 (I'd been without health insurance for 10 years, so few to no measurements) He always knew me as overweight. He thought the diet and exercise thing should be tried, but I had a sickness in my soul, the sense that there was something brave in admitting defeat and not battering my head against an impermeable brick wall. For him it's about the exercise, for me it's about the food. I know that if wouldn't shovel it in so much, he'd be better off, and he knows that if I moved my butt more than I would be better off, but in fact, obesity is a disease we are both cursed to have. And the struggle to change isn't even as straight forward as just quitting (I've always known that it's easy to tell an addict to quit their drug of choice, but not so easy to do, else addiction wouldn't be a real problem). But with food you can't quit. You have to modify. Since it's  not something you can just quit, it's never as straightforward as cocaine or tobacco or alcohol.

One hopes that there is a kinder gentler future where diseases like obesity are more than treated, they are understood, short-circuited prior to afflicting people, and that society itself changes, becomes more aware of the evils inherent in stuffing our food full of garbage. Sadly, until our society changes and until big businesses stop profiting off our obesity, and the unnatural cravings they instill in us with their garbage zero-useful-nutrition foods they pedal, obesity will continue to flourish.