2013 an seems like everyone's forgot what actually hard work is.

I don't consider it a disease, but it can be uncontrollable if its a symptom of something else (like diabetes, which is of course a disease). However, I also don't consider alcoholism a disease, as in order to become an alcoholic people typically have to make consistent mistakes over and over again. But I mean I'm no expert and this is all my opinion, ya'll can feel however ya'll want to feel.

More of a choice. Obviously no one goes, "Well I'm going to be obese." It's not eating healthily and not getting exercise, but they still know lacking the two can/will cause obesity. When I think of a disease, I think of something you contract without any known way of avoiding it or are born with. It's hard to argue either way I suppose, considering people can become obese from eating too much due to depression, which one may call a disease. It can be broken down into so many different categories/terms, it's hardly worth picking a side and arguing it strongly, for me at least. I've never been overweight. I was told at a young age to eat until I'm satisfied, not until I'm full and to play outside as much as possible. Now, I don't eat healthy foods, but I make sure to lift every once in awhile or do some activity to stay in good shape. I'm fully aware that if I quit exercising and eat too much, I'll start to get fat. If I want to lose weight, I know how to go about doing that as well. It's somewhat silly to say I suffer from a disease caused by eating too much, when you know you should just stop eating so much.

TL;DR: I don't really know what I consider it. Call it what you want. For the majority of obese people, they bring it upon themselves and don't make the choice to change. Although it can be deeper than just a choice.

Sometimes sure, i've known people who don't eat that much at all, but are fat.

The fat people who do nothing but eat shite like cake, burgers, and icecream, and complain about their disease though, no, sorry you're just a greedy fuck.

I've never seen why somebody's weight should be anybody's business but themselves. Let people do whatever they want with their time and lives.

@golguin: Even if you don't agree with Matt and Trey's views, they have a way of putting things into...lets say...perspective.

I made it a point not to post any link to that episode when I was discussing alcoholism with some other dude earlier in the thread, but I'm glad you did.

EDIT: Jesus Christ. I had no idea the 12 Step Program was so...faith based. Can it truly cure a terrible disease like Alcoholism? I'd call BS, but I believe it's been very successful over the years. I guess I should apologize for my earlier comments about Alcoholism.

Here are the 12 steps. I grabbed them from wikipedia.

These are the original twelve steps as published by Alcoholics Anonymous:^[10]

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of Godas we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

In some cases, yes (thyroid dysfunction etc) but mostly, no.

It's lack of self-control and totally fucked-up eating habits (aided by a rotten food industry).

It can be a symptom of many different things, laziness included but not exclusively that by any means

Isn't alcoholism a disease as well?

Very well said. I'll say that there are medical conditions that cause people to have a low metabolism that makes it very difficult for them to maintain a healthy weight, but they don't suffer from obesity. They suffer from the conditions that are making them "obese". You are not born with "obesity", but you can be born with medical conditions that prevent you from leading a healthy life.

It's the same thing with people who drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes. They can cause serious damage to their bodies, but the damaging substances that get into their bodies are not the diseases.

It's funny how society likes to attach the label of "disease" to vices that are socially acceptable. I'm waiting for prescription drugs to receive the same kind of label. Drugs you buy from the dealer down the street are still terrible and you deserve to go to jail for that though. No sympathy for you there.

You're oversimplifying things. Someone who has a Depressive Disorder (or major depression, don't know what it is called as of DSM-V) can have eating disorders, either overeating or eating too little. Obesity becomes part of of the disease/condition, a result of the depression. A lack of determination or self-control can be attributed to a wide degree of varying psychological problems. Obesity can also be purely because the body reacts poorly to a substances like anorexins (satiety) and orexines (hunger) or has high insuline tolerance.
I don't say that obesity cannot be prevented or cured, I'm just saying that some people are more prone to becoming obese and that those people shouldn't be lumped in the same category of people that cannot do basic daily energy expenditures and therefore are obese.

And yes, obesity can also be due to sheer laziness and ignorance. But you only have anecdotal evidence to support your claims.


You're right that America (I don't live there) seems to advertise junk food and other crap, and adds high fructose corn syrup into everything, downright to bread. That a problem of society. It's like blaming a rehab for doing drugs after you've locked him up in a drug den

It's a disease...cause by society!

Seriously though, while nearly all cases of obesity are caused by poor eating habits, those eating habits are often born out of the fact that healthy foods can be prohibitively expensive.

Shit like what @breadfan or @gunslingerpanda have said about "I'm not educated enough in medicine to know if obesity is a disease so I can't say anything about it - What all of you should be saying" is a fucking INSULT. You don't need a medical degree. You need the ability to read and/or listen.

Here's a simple equation that anyone can figure out on their own:

Calorie intake < calories burned = not obese
Calorie intake > calories burned = obese

Stunning, and I didn't need any kind of degree for that. That was taught to me by my high school health education teacher...and my middle school P.E. coach before him...and my elementary school P.E. coach before him.

Obesity isn't a disease. It's one of two things:

• Muthafuckers being lazy, making excuses, and wanting pity/handouts because they have a lack of willpower and determination
• People having unfortunate hereditary hitches in their DNA that can lead to body functions working differently than they should such as metabolism, insulin production, breakdown of intake through the intestines, etc etc.

Even in the case of the second scenario, it's not a disease. You know how many people I know of that have said they have something in that second scenario and then lost weight using the basic equation above? Not a single fucking one of them. Why? Because you can still train your body to make those functions work properly, even for a short period of time, to lose some weight. Here's a couple of things one in the second scenario could do:

• Shock diet: 3 days of turkey/broccoli/2 gallons of water, 3 days of chicken/steak/1 gallon of water, 1 day of brown rice/sweet potatoes/half-gallon of water....do that for two weeks. BE AMAZED HOW MUCH WEIGHT YOU LOSE! Moreover, it's not terrible for you (unless you are diabetic, then it will probably kill you on the seventh day since you are dumping carbs into your body like crazy).
• Essential workouts of squats, deadlifts, and bench press: These are the three paramounts of physical fitness, as they are all compound workouts that affect a ton of shit in your body, hits a lot of muscle groups. Moreover, just because you are OBESE does not mean you cannot be STRONG. It does not mean you have to submit to a bullshit mentality of what your lifestyle should be. Prove people wrong.
• 20 minutes - 1 hour of walking a day: get a treadmill and walk for that allotted time frame with the treadmill set to an incline (about step 4 or 5 starting out, increasing as your time frame increases), as walking like this is a FAT BURNER! I have a guy that I've been working out with that started at 400 pounds, and he fed me the "obesity is hereditary" excuse. I kept trying to get him to come with me for a solid month, just to get on the treadmill for a 20 minute walk. Guess what? He's up to an hour long walk a month later, and he's lost almost 25 pounds (drinking at least 1 gallon of water a day).

There is literally no excuse that someone can give me for how they cannot lose weight. I just started this fitness-inclusive and healthy-food lifestyle three months ago. THREE MONTHS! That's it, and look at the education I've gained just by looking at some books, reading some websites, and watching some YouTube videos (I highly recommend Elliott Hulse, total badass and a cool cat). I was the laziest piece of shit possible, and now I'm losing fat content, gaining muscle, down from 320 to 280 (although those numbers are bullshit anyways because muscle weighs more than fat, so it's all about overall fat content vs. muscle content that actually matters), and I do things I never dreamed of doing. I can bench over 140 (which isn't impressive to many, but it is to me). I can deadlift over 240, leg press 480, use my quads to extend for almost 200, squat a little over 200...and this is in three months.

What it comes down to is simple: we live in a country that no longer promotes fitness, healthiness, and general well-being of its people (referring to the United States). Instead, we live in a country that promotes fast food, junk food, high fructose corn syrup, GMO foods, and laziness through entertainment such as sitting in front of a TV watching shows, playing video games, going to the movies and sitting around... We've even had many public schools that have taken physical education AND health education OUT of their curriculums because they felt they were unnecessary. SERIOUSLY?! THOSE ARE UNNECESSARY THINGS?!

So no, obesity is not a disease. If you want to call obesity a disease, then call these other things a disease as well:

• Laziness
• Lack of determination/willpower
• Unwillingness to learn/educate oneself
• Excuses

Those are all things that are just as infectious...but they still aren't diseases. They are negative thoughts and ideas, and they spread just as much as a disease.

I would be willing to entertain the idea that obesity can be a SYMPTOM of something much greater like insulin production, intestinal issues, stomach issues, muscle deterioration issues through heredity or some kind of actual disease, etc. However, obesity is NOT a disease.

Im not fat, just big boned.

No, But the only people who seem to care about my weight, or how I look, tend to be people who aren't me. And I have come to realize that I value other peoples opinions way less then my own. Having said that, i dont think its fair to say that everyone is able to lose weight doing the same thing. And that all it takes is "Hard work".

I consider it a decease only because of how many people suffer from it in the US. However it is something that I think is completely avoidable. Stop buying fast food, buy all your groceries from the perimeter of the store, cut out soda and diet soda, and for fucks sake exercise for at least 30min a day!

Its a super simple thing to avoid, if you don't take in 5,000+ calories a day.

How is this contributing to the discussion? It's just a misinformed view on obesity.
An addiction to food can be as destructive as an addiction to drugs.

@sooty said:

I could take in over 50.000 kcalories daily and it still would be hard to work off a tenth in the gym. Going to a gym is a much smaller contribution to losing weight, it will not *fix* obesity on it's own.

@sooty: Ever the dipshit, eh Sooty?

I'll just point people to this video

EDIT: Sorry, linked the wrong video last time.

Yes let's call something that can be fixed by taking your fat ass to a gym a disease.

Oh America, you!

@troll93 said:

Yeah I know. We like to do fat shaming because it's directly visible that someone is overweight. They're an easy target and they're plentiful. But people never say something about alcoholics, since it's not as easily visible that someone has liver-failure or is close to it. Both obesity and liver cirrhosis can be self-inflicted diseases, but indeed fat shaming seems to be the cool thing to do.

But don't be afraid to comment on someone's (poor) lifestyle decision. If you see someone that is overweight, ordering a supersized menu or real fatty foods. Just ask them if such a huge portion or such a greasy food is neccessary. You will probably get bad remarks or get scoffed at, but at least you asked them the question they should be asking them to theirselves. Don't imply that they're fat, just ask them if that such a greasy thing is neccessary.
Most of the time, they themselves know it's a bad decision but never comtemplate about it. Someone else needs to push them a little.

Reading your post opened my mind about afew things. Some of the stuff you've mentioned I have relatives going through, and from my own personal experiences I can relate.

@subjugation said:

I don't quite understand why calling obesity a disease insults you. I understand it might devalue the meaning behind of having to live and deal with a (in your case: cronic) disease, but that's not the point in calling obesity a disease. Obesity can be a culmination of a wide variety of diseases or conditions, manifesting itself in overeating, lack of selfdiscipline and excersize.

It is true that you are not born obese in the conventional sense, with the exception a condition called macrosomia. But the environment of the womb and thus the condition of the mother matters a lot on whether you're prone to obesity in your adolescent/adult life. For example, research show that a lot of children born in the dutch hunger winter, in which starvation was nationwide, became obese in adult life.

More common reasons are that poor weaning by the mother, the partial or complete lack of breastfeeding make children much more prone to obesity in adult life. Mothers smoking during pregnancy also increases risk of obesity in offspring.

I'm saying that some obese people were destined to be obese from the day they were born. The notion that every and all cases of obesity is self-inflicted should just vanish already. It's not always that simple. It's not always self inflicted or purely a lack of self-control. It could be due to other medical reasons I listed above.

This. Once you call it a disease and doctors tell their patients they have a disease, then the patients will consciously try to get better. Mind over matter as they say.

Obesity is a disease in the same way as any substance addiction is a disease.

One word: Corn

Hey guys, I'm in the field of medicine and I thought I should clear things up:

First of all, in the definition of disease, while you can look up many of them...

never

does it include culpability. You can have both self-inflicted and not self-inflicted diseases. The medical field never treats the patients like it's their fault, the principle of medicine is to treat anyone no matter the cause. If the disease is self inflicted, like liver failure due to severe alcholism, we can only ask prequisites/conditions for treatment like alcohol abstinence for six months prior to a liver transplantation surgery. We can outright say the alcohol is the cause of the disease and that the patient must stop drinking, but we never ever blame the patient for its own disease.

Obesity is an abnormal state of the human body and therefore it could be classified as a disease. Whether it's self-inflicted or not, that's not of any concern in classification. Someone in this topic classified obesity as comorbidity, which is already true in the field of medicine. I understand that some people might use this "Obesity is a disease" as an excuse for their choices in lifestyle.

But there is much more involved with obesity then just overeating and neglecting daily excercize. Genetics, your social and physical environment, your mental state and your metabolism all play a role in obesity. There are "rare" diseases that can lead to obesity. One of them is hypothyroidism, it might not be as rare as you'd think. It's uncommon but not rare. Cushing's disease can also leads to obesity. Rare genetic abberations like Klinefelter lead to obesity. Corticosteroids use (for auto-immune diseases) can lead to obesity.

If you hang out in social environment in which sedentary, maybe even obese people prevail, you have a higher risk of become obese yourself. If you do not have enough opportunities to excersize, for example living a busy and industrial city or the slums, there might not be enough gyms to fill your needs. If because of depression or other mental issues you like to hang out at home and never go out, you might get obese too.

My point is, never judge someone that is overweight that she or he is just overeating and excersizing too little. It might be that (s)he is using medication that leads to obesity. It might be another underlying disease.

I do think that we should classify obesity as a disease. Doing so, it will help bring the problem of obesity to attention and a lot more experts will be involved in this. Why should anyone care that some people will use this to excuse their obesity? The only ones they are fooling, are themselves. It can also work positively. Obese people will more likely to see themselves as sick and as someone who has a disease, the first thing anyone does when stricken with a disease is to find a cure. If the cure can be as simple as going on a diet and excersizing more, more power to them.

It depends on the cause, some people genuinely have extremely low metabolism and have other issues that can cause obesity but i feel that if your in a position to change it, its not a disease.

Nope, but it can be an illness.

I'll leave it up to the experts to decide.

It is not a disease.

That can't be true. That would mean things like broken bones or bee stings would be qualified as diseases too, which makes no sense.

After reading several of the posts here I still believe there's a clear distinction between diseases and injuries, and obesity falls much closer to the latter both in how it's contracted and treated.

I just wanted to quote this again, because I completely agree.

Some people have a LOT more trouble losing weight than others, and I'll be happy to admit that fact, but they still have a choice in the matter. Call it a condition, call it an addiction, but don't don't try to tell me that it's completely outside of their control.

obesity is a disease cause by eating to much. the fatties love that cake.

in the same way smoking is a disease. them poor smokers smoking them dam cancer sticks they just can't help themselves and they need our sympathy.

I hate how some people make themselves out to be victims, but in reality most of the time it's someones own doing. Like I mentioned earlier I used to be obese, and made alot of excuses of why I couldn't get the weight off. Until one day I just got tired of feeling sorry for myself.

I stopped complaining and focus on putting my efforts into getting healthy. It was tough I did it all by myself without the help of others. I started working out everyday and watching my calorie intake, and then overtime the weight just came off. I went from 330 to 210 within a year and a half.

I feel like some people limit themselves without going above and beyond, and like to throw a pity party. I've met alot of people like that in my gym, and alot of times it annoys me.

I think the main difference between obesity and other diseases is that you have a clear solution in front of you which requires no medical assistance or drugs, which cannot be said about most other diseases I can think of.

Herpies is a disease even though you basically give it to yourself through reckless habits

I hate this remove all personal responsibility bullshit that's been going on for a long time now. Obesity is NOT a disease, it could be a symptom, it causes other diseases but it in itself is not a disease. The vast majority of people that are obese or overweight may have other diseases brought on by their obesity, but, and I hate to break it to you, it was their own doing. Either through ignorance or abject indifference they made themselves fat.

I accept that some people could have certain medical conditions that predispose themselves to ending up overweight, but usually this can also be managed. Only in very, very rare cases can someone truly say it wasn't their fault and they have a medical condition. Thus making obesity a symptom, these cases definitely don't even make up for 1% of the so called obesity epidemic everyone is suffering from.

This is coming from someone who wasn't obese yet, but was on my way towards it. Personally it was mostly indifference, I knew a lot of the things I was doing weren't great, I just didn't care. One day that changed, I started working out and lost a bunch of weight. Even when I was heavier I knew it was me, and I never made excuses for it. Everyone loves a scapegoat. no one wants to point the finger towards themselves anymore.

Only if being stupid is also a disease.... People are using the idea that being a fatass is a disease to continue eating cheetos, playing video games and being a fat ass.

OP's got a classic case of blaming the victim.

As has been said, probably none of us are qualified to say whether or not it is a disease, but I think a strong case could be made that in some cases it's a mental illness at least (food addiction).

Whether or not being fat should be classified as a disease, I don't know. I do know that being fat can cause serious long term health problems though. So in that sense I guess you could call it a disease. I would think it's more of a condition.

Nope, living in a country where obesity is thankfully extremely rare, I'm fairly certain that it is a culturally bound syndrome. Can some people be prone to be a bit heavier? Sure, I don't have anything against that, some people are gonna be genetically slimmer or a bit stockier. Nobody is genetically going to be obese however, so I have no real time for those people who do end up that way.

The only possible exception is that their parents started them early on a shitty diet (which can form a lot of early dependencies), which is child abuse as far as I am concerned. Is it a disease? No, not a physical one at least and I don't think we should accept it as such or give it a pass. Maybe it makes me an asshole, but if we start giving people a pass on obesity and don't call them out on it, we are implicitly condoning it as a lifestyle. It's not a healthy lifestyle for yourself, but if you choose it, you should be prepared to deal with the consequences, both physical and social. It's most certainly not a healthy lifestyle for your children, which is where it should be stopped immediately.

I wouldn't say obsessed, but losing weight has changed my life style. It's hard to explain, but it's something I enjoy now.

Very well said.

Obesity is not a disease. Obesity may be a symptom of something else, but it's insulting to me to call it a disease. I have a physical chronic disease. No matter what I do, there isn't anything I can do to get rid of it. I was born with it. I was unlucky with genetics. You aren't born with obesity and similarly it isn't like you can't address it. You can control what you eat. You can control how much physical activity/exercise you have. You can address it. If you want to attribute your weight/size to something beyond your control, I'm guessing that it's probably poor eating and exercise habits perhaps coupled with some sort of mental imbalance/disorder that causes you to be poor at regulating yourself (and that is your disease/disorder), but please don't call obesity a disease. People need to take responsibility for their eating habits.

Your body doesn't magically become obese by itself. This is just making me angry and I know I'm going to ramble so I'm going to cut this off. But seriously, if you want to seek some sort of comfort and justification for being obese by telling yourself it is a disease you are being irresponsible. Fix your diet, show some self restraint, and exercise. Some of us have problems that can't be fixed by just stepping up to the plate (no pun intended) and being an adult, so don't go and squander the opportunity to be healthy that some of us wish we could have.