Nutmegger

I see that the "blame everyone else because I have no self-control" syndrome is in full force in the UK, too!

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/worl...fficientl.html

robin1234

Not sure who is to blame for his obesity, but it seems to me that Mr. Mason would have been responsible for going back to his GP and asking for referral to a different specialist, or asking about different strategies to get at his problem. My experience with health care providers is that you cannot expect a satisfactory result first time; sometimes you have to be persistent.

Nutmegger

Very true -- and not just with health care, in so many facets of life!

Cape Blue

You're assuming his obesity is down to a self-control issue, however this is rarely the case.

More likely he either has hormonal issues or mental ones.

ldyinlv

I saw the show about him, It looked to me as if the NHS was doing everything they could to help him at the time. I have empathy for the man, but hes the one putting the food into his mouth, self control is what is needed.

Cape Blue

I didn't see the film, but I think the culture of blame towards fat people is poorly considered.

Hormones drive a lot of our systems, when you are young you do not grow taller because of eating more, your hormones tell your body to grow and your body calls-out for more food - it is the hormones that start the ball rolling and the increased eating is the result of this, not the instigator. It is likely that many (or indeed most) fat people have hormonal disorders that do not allow fat-reserves to metabolized and instead call-out for more food.

If the body is unable to get to the fat stores (insulin dominating glycogen) then these people feel like they are starving because they cannot access the stores they are carrying - it's just not realistic to tell "starving" people not to eat. If it was realistic, overweight rates would not be so high in the developed world. This is a medical problem, not a self-control one.

The hormone responsible for most of the metabolic syndrome is insulin and this is also the prime player in the diabetes epidemic as well.

Why is this problem increasing? Possibly due to the change in diet over the past 100-odd years where we now imbibe far more highly-refined carbohydrates than ever before - white flour, HFCS hidden in many foods, sugars etc. These are like food-crack and can have addictive traits mentally as well as spiking insulin and preventing fat metabolism.

Some people's bodies will be better at handling this issue, just like some are better at handling alcohol and some are lactose intolerant and so on - not all will get hormonal imbalances, but it appears many do.

There are also the issues of depression/addiction to consider and the "high" obtained from eating highly refined carbohydrates. If it was just as simple as fat people developing some more self-control I doubt that most developed countries having over 60% of their populace overweight would occur.

Often exercise is also called into question, however exercise tends to have a number of negative effects when it comes to weight - sure, during and after the exercise one uses up calories, however what also happens is that people tend to eat more correspondingly ("working up an appetite") and then tend to do less activity when not exercising, negating the calorie output gains. I am not saying exercise isn't good for you for a number of reasons, but it has limited effect as a weight management tool in the real world unless accompanied by diet and other considerations.

I thought it was interesting watching Eddie Izzard do his 43 marathons in 7 weeks - an amazing feat, but he still had the same small paunch at the end that he had at the beginning - he increased his eating to correspond with the exercise and didn't lose any weight.

Lothianlad

A sense of accountability for one's own actions and a sense of responsibility for taking care of the issue on one's own initiave without even thinking that fault lies elsewhere and not within one's self is quite alien to many people here in the UK now, a situation made even worse by eleven years of Labour (mis)Government (mis)rule and the creation of a Nanny State.

A good case in point was the massive disruption caused by the recent heavy snows and severe icy conditions which affected most, if not all, of this country for weeks on end recently.

Local authorities all over the UK were indundated with irate people whingeing about the treacherously icy/snow packed condition of their streets and roads and especially the pavements/pathways immediately outside their homes and front gardens.

Similarly they bitterly complained about the failure of some councils to collect household refuse, in the form of bags or/and wheelie on the due days.

It did not occur to them that they themselves could well have picked up a shovel and chipped away at the ice or cleared away all the snow from the frontages of their properties, as is the statutory law in many other European countries, or loaded all their refuse and household waste and taken it all round to their nearest Waste/Recycling centres - every local community in the UK has one.

chartreuse

Well said, Sir.

cindyabs

I read about a council that was offering 2,000 shovels to folks and one guy said, they'd probably get nicked. Tough crowd!

GeoffM

My local binmen actually took my wheelie bin off my drive, emptied it, and put it back again after I forgot to put it out! Much appreciated as we'd had two parties (birthday and Christmas) beforehand so actually had enough waste to fill the wheelie bin which is unusual for us.

Regarding the healthily-challenged bloke, some people murder but they don't blame their hormones for it as far as I know. Kudos to ldyinlv and Lothianlad.

Cape Blue

The hormonal systems run a number of items, in this instance metabolism, growth, homeostasis. There is no reason not to suppose that obesity has a medical hormonal cause, certainly no less than the base assumption that around 50-60% of the western population keep stuffing down the pies because they are plain greedy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormone

chartreuse

Yep. You say "endocrine", most folks think diabetes. But I got heavily involved in the whole thing when The Kitten became hyperthyroid and it turns out it's very big and very complex.

Though I do think the corn lobby has blood on its hands - and that's true with both homo sapiens and felis domesticus.

Cape Blue

No, no, no - it's the cats fault it started losing weight and vomiting etc - it need to have more self-control and stop blaming its hormones

dunroving

Your previous explanation for obesity relies on a genetic rationale, but this does not explain the rapid increase in obesity over just the past 20-30 years - genetic adaptations do not occur that quickly.

fatbrit

Diet.