Thursday, October 16, 2008

Morbid Obesity Kills Me

Okay. I know I've made no secret of the fact that I think there are way too many way too big people. Particularly here in Texas. I have no understanding of why a person would let themselves get in such a condition. When you get so big you have trouble putting on your shoes why do you decide to eat another cookie slathered with frosting? It seems, to me, such an act of self-destruction combined with child-like self-indulgence. I don't see how an obese person could have any self-esteem, they must be constantly in a state of extreme self-loathing.

I've really only known, personally, one morbidly obese person. The behaviors that caused the obesity were bizarrely self-indulgent, almost arrogantly so. I just don't understand why one would continue to eat like a pig when ones upper body has grown so fat that you no longer have a neck and your head sits atop a mound of flesh like a ball on top of a blob.

Looking at it clinically, obesity is a condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to such an extent that ones health is negatively affected. Excessive body weight is associated with various diseases, particularly cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, sleep apnea, cancers and osteoarthritis. As a result, obesity reduces life expectancy. The primary treatment for obesity is dieting and physical exercise. If dieting and exercise fails, anti-obesity drugs and surgery can be tried.

Obesity is the result from too much energy intake overwhelming a person's basal metabolic rate and level of physical exercise. Excessive caloric intake and a lack of physical activity in genetically susceptible individuals is thought to explain most cases of obesity. With rates of adult and childhood obesity increasing, it is currently viewed as a serious public health problem.

Most obesity experts agree that a combination of excessive calorie consumption and a sedentary lifestyle are the primary causes of obesity. In a minority of cases, increased food consumption can be attributed to genetic, medical, or psychiatric illness. The rising prevalence of obesity is attributed to the availability of an easily accessible highly caloric variety of bad things to eat.

Certain physical and mental illnesses and the pharmaceutical substances used to treat them can increase risk of obesity. However, obesity is currently not regarded as a psychiatric disorder.

Personally. I think it should be. Just as any other form of self-destructiveness is considered a mental illness. The morbidly obese person who's casual acquaintance it was my misfortune to make has serious mental health issues in addition to the morbid obesity. It seems to me that the morbid obesity is just another manifestation of the underlying mental health issues. And should be treated as such.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

I agree with you that morbid obesity is a form of mental illness and often-times bad character including self-loathing, boundary issues, lack of personal responsibility, delusional thinking and usually obsessive-compulsive.

Survey says grossly obese people even over 400 pounds don't view themselves as overweight so that ought to be a tip off right there that there is something horribly wrong with them.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/7258/title/Do_People_Know_When_Theyre_Overweight%3F

"...Indeed, among adults who met the National Institutes of Health criteria for being obese, only 15 percent realized they were obese, notes Kimberly P. Truesdale of the University of North Carolina. She says that her team's findings, which she reported in San Francisco earlier this month at the Experimental Biology '06 meeting, have important public health implications: "If [obese] people don't identify with being obese, then they're most likely going to ignore messages warning of health risks."..."

Most of them claim it's some kind of thyroid problem, but even people with thyroid difficulties who wish to be healthy can manage it.

It's a lack of self-control and often a method of trying to force other people to give them sympathy and special treatment while themselves lacking empathy for others.

Many morbidly obese are complete power-freaks. Morbidly obese women tend to view all normal weight women as enemies and tend to be bullies and this is true even in childhood.

http://www.bullyoffline.org/related/overweig.htm

"...What has struck me is that often the female serial bully is fat, and chooses a slim female target on to whom to project her self-loathing. Envy is a strong motivator for bullies...."

Survey says - most fat people are fat because they are lazy:

Very obese adults almost completely sedentary

"Morbidly obese adults are sedentary for more than 99 percent of the day, getting only a fraction of the amount of walking that experts recommend for staying healthy, a small study suggests...

...The study of 10 men and women found that participants spent an average of 23 hours and 52 minutes sleeping, lying down or sitting each day...."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090408/hl_time/08599188994200;_ylt=As.HWCbKK9AD7Anv.Gg1Gt3VJRIF

Kids Who Lack Self-Control More Prone to Obesity Later

"... In two papers published this week in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, scientists found that preschool-age children who had trouble with self-control and the ability to delay gratification gained more weight by the time they were preteens than those who were better at regulating their behavior..."