Obesity Disease

Obesity is now a disease.

   I don’t get it.  You’re either fat, in which case you need to lose weight in order to be healthy, or you’re not fat.  And you either got yourself there on your own or your parents didn’t care about you and let you eat whatever your chubby little heart desired.  One thing is for certain, only you can take responsibility for your fatness.

   Grow up America, not out!  When I was growing up it was awful being fat because you were the minority.  There were maybe one or two kids in my class that were fat.  Of course, our moms were home making us dinner every night, we didn’t get McDonald’s – it was a treat that was maybe done a couple times a year, if that.

   We were made to play outside.  There weren’t video games like there are today.  When Atari came into the house (through my brother who worked at a farm and also trapped to pay for it himself), we still had to go out and play.  If not we had to do chores.  Simple as that.

When I was nine I got a pony.  She tried to roll over every time I tried to ride her so eventually I ended up getting rid of her.  She got fat from eating all day and no riding, but sometimes my sister and I would ride up to the neighbor’s house.  One day the old farmer was there and he said “Fat little pony for a fat little girl”.  I was one of the larger kids in my class, but definitely not fat.  However, that one man made me feel fat for most of my life.  The one good thing about it was that I always kept myself in check.

   I try to eat well.  I exercise.  I try to make good choices about my health.  I don’t want to be fat and sick.  I want to be able to walk and not be out of breath because I’m lugging around a hundred or two extra pounds.  It kills me when a friend of mine says they are on a diet and are trying to lose weight and then say that they drink two liters of diet soda every day.  Two liters!  That’s not common sense.

   But to call obesity a disease is a travesty.  I think it’s the mind that is diseased, and if enough people realized it and went into treatment for the way they think then they could combat their physical condition and beat the diseases that obesity brings to the table.  (And we could keep our mental facilities and treat everyone who needs treatment, especially those that want to kill people and seem to find a way to do it – in big fashion).

   The AMA needs a wake-up call.  Not everything can, or should, be solved with a pill.  Personally, I don’t like the idea of living in a diseased and weakened society.  I’m not even sure if an overweight person likes the idea of being told they are diseased now.  Hopefully not.  Hopefully they are outraged and will turn to the AMA and tell them that they have diseases due to a condition that they have put themselves in.  Isn’t anyone else tired of the labels heaped upon us?  Hopefully it motivates them to do something as simple as parking farther away and walking an extra block to work or having an apple instead of chips.  I don’t know, but I think calling it a disease is wrong.

   Some decent, old-fashioned advice is what the world needs.  Instead of a world where it is “everyone else’s fault” or we “can’t help” the way we are, maybe we should pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, face the fact that we are responsible for ourselves and can only start change within ourselves.  Maybe then the world, or at least one’s very own world, would start changing for the better.  One step at a time.  You can do it if you put your mind to it.