AMA classifies obesity as a disease (Page 6)

We call it over eating disorder.

Or thyroid disorder.

Or hormonal disorder.

Or impulse control disorder.

Or compulsive disorder.

Various organ dysfunctions.

Depression.

Anxiety.

I could go on.......

It just depends on the REASON for the obesity.  Obesity is not a REASON.  We need to treat the REASON.

You see, it's not just about the word DISEASE. 

Calling it that just begs the question in my mind, why aren't we already treating the actual underlying various causes of it instead of trying to recatagorize it?

OK, I can accept that.

But for your question... do you honestly think the entire medical community is turning a blind eye to underlying problems and just treating fat, or thinks that is all there is to it?

That's the thing... the FAT goes away, but the OBESITY doesn't.  It makes PERMANENT physiological changes to your body, which the AMA says will likely require other "interventions" during someone's lifetime.

That's a whole other discussion. I have a DO, and she will give me a Eastern diagnosis, and a Western one. I told her day one I was not into better living through chemistry, and she never even bothers with it.

I think that's part of the reason WHY they're moving to qualify it as a disease, and why in their "declaration" they specifically called out the long-term changes that occur in the body even AFTER the fat is gone.

To take a drag from the smoking analogy again:   People get lung cancer after choosing to smoke.   Nobody here is arguing that lung cancer is not a disease.  (are they?)   Regardless of how you get fat, permanent changes are happening to your body, and they have long-term effects.  That's why it's a disease.  

I think people ( or me ) was thinking that people are saying there is some "disease" that makes people get fat and are helpless victims of it. But if what you mean is that over eating, poor diet, and a sedentary lifestyle are choices that caused the disease of obesity like the choice of smoking causes the disease of lung cancer, I can see that logic. The act of getting obese is choice, but once you get there, you have the disease of obesity. I'm in based on that distinction.

Up until now, I think for the most part the medical community has treated obesity as a lifestyle issue.  An obese person goes to the doctor, he's told to go on a diet and start exercising.  If he has any medical issues like diabetes, high blood pressure, or one of the myriad of other issues, those get treaded in and of themselves.  But the bottom line is that the individual must change his lifestyle because there is no magic cure for being grossly overweight.

Now, by calling this a disease instead of a lifestyle issue, it implies that it can be "cured" by something OTHER than a lifestyle change.  In many cases I believe that "cure" will be a new myriad of drugs like the ones we've seen in the past that supposedly change a person's biomechanics so it's much easier to lose weight.  At that point, the thing that really needed to change, the person's lifestyle, habits and mindset on eating and exercise may just get swept under the rug in favor of popping a pill and keeping everything else status quo.  Sure, the doctor may suggest the individual diet and exercise along with their new medication but if people can lose even a little bit of fat without making any changes they are likely to make no changes at all.

We've already seen that gastric bypass is failing people because they think it is a magic cure and they don't change their lifestyle or their thinking toward food and exercise.  I just think that calling obesity a disease will lead us further down this road whether it's more and newer surgeries or more and newer magic bullet drugs.

This is a great perspective. I also get hung up on the semantics of disease/illness/condition. Causality is a key component that is still going to be confused and unresolved for a lot of people.

But you're hitting on an aspect of this that we may have been missing here. This is the AMA using certain language to say that obesity is a state of illness. It is the opposite of health. It needs to be treated so it can be changed. There are plenty of obese people who argue all day that they are in great health. i used to be one of them.

Unfortunately, too many people don't htink very much about things, and just latch onto whatever they already want to hear, so Noelle is definitely right to be concerned about how this disease language will be taken by too many people as a reason to become even more passive.

Which is especially ironic, considering how much we speak of people having battles with cancer. Once diagnosed, so much of cancern treatment is something that invades you, and leaves you powerless. But we always speak in terms of the terms battle when it comes to the patient him/herself. I would submit that there is far more that any one of us can do to combat the illness of obesity, more activity we are capable of to fight it off. And yet this is the area where we are more liekly to throw up our hands and say "see! It's a disease so I can't win." )Well the heck with that. I've been battling this thing for years, and continue to do so.

Take a look at substance abuse. The prevailing wisdom... which took a long time to get there... is that there is a disease that was present before the substance came around, and is still present after they are gone. Lifestyle changed, mind set did not. Yet that has become a source of strength to many of how to beat it. Do you not think that to beat your enemy, knowledge is good?

For those with these types of issues...they have denial, excuses, and rationalizations for days on end. They have invested their entire life into what they do, and plain being wrong is not an option. Sure, absolutely, some will seek doctors to tell them what they want to hear. They will consider it an excuse that now they can't do anything about... but I PROMISE you... they are doing that right now today. What they latch on to is irrelevant, and the doctors that cosign their B.S. are not going anywhere. They are already out there.

HOWEVER, is it not possible that this will help some? Is it not possible that there is a underlying problem and that a pill is just as helpful to them as antibiotics are to infections? Is it not possible that others will start taking this thing seriously... that they have something they have to fight... and not just a (in their mind) temporary condition of their choosing? If that is true, isn't it possible that this is just another step taken and like most things, it will help some and not others, and nothing on this planet fixes everything for everyone?

In the end I think MOST of us posting here are in agreement about many things:

-That obesity is largely a lifestyle disorder.

-There is no magic pill, medical intervention or operation that will "cure" it unless the individual is willing to change his/her lifestyle

-People who are grossly overweight should not be coddled, but should be treated compassionately.  We need to find a balance between calling them lazy pieces of sh*t, and telling them it isn't their fault they're fat.

-Now that the AMA made its decision, hopefully more people just get the help they need and we see the rates began to drop instead of continuing to rise each year.  I guess this remains to be seen.  It will be interesting to see statistically what this shift in thinking does over the next several years.

As someone who was once obese this is harsh, but its the truth.  Frankly it needs to be harsh too, I love the sugar coating comment, its the truth.

I was 5'10'' and got up to 260lbs smoked between 15-25 cigs a day too.  That is a BMI of 37.3 (FWIW, I know BMI is not the best metric, especially for athletes)

I was 260lbs, because I was what Sous said, I was lazy POS who would rather sit on the couch with a bag of potato chips and a 2L of coke and play video games / watch TV for hours on end.

Now everyone does not have to do endurance training, but they should make the right choices.  Eat right, get some exercise (heck a 30 minute brisk walk a day should do it for most people), take the stairs, park at the back of the lot, whatever.

I woke up one day and realized that I was to dang fat, and it was my fault and only I could do something to change it.  So I did, I started to walk/run, transitioned to run/walk, decided to train for a sprint tri, 100k bike ride, half marathon, so on.  Now I'm looking forward to my first 70.3 tri in August.

I'm down to 183lbs (BMI 26.3), smoke free for 1 year +.  I want to get down to 170, its a slow process now though.

While I will also exclude the small percentage of people who do have some disease that causes them to gain weight (Like it was said too, I see this as a symptom not a disease) I don't think we can justify having all these fat lazy people now say "oh but I have a disease, poor meeeeeee!"

Harsh?  Maybe, to bad.  I've been in the trenches of this fight, and if I can win it, so can they.  It takes will power. 

This does not mean you shouldn't get help, go to your doctor, ask for support, but don't blame it on a disease that I frankly don't believe exists.

Sorry for my rant, having been obese before I am pretty passionate about this subject!

EDIT:  Just wanted to say, I did not have time to read the whole thread.  Sorry if stuff is repeated / not quoted.

Perhaps one day, you will get to the real truth of the matter... that indeed you are not a piece of $h!t, but that for a period of time in your life, you made really horrible decisions. You are capable of making better ones with the proper knowledge. And that indeed, you are a human being, no better, or no worse than any other human being. I pray one day you can see that. You deserve nothing less.

I agree with everything else.. and yes, some respond to tough love... but for the above, speaking just for myself, I am not responsible for having a disease, but I am responsible for what I do with it. It makes perfect sense to me. I wish you could understand the term is not an excuse.

Thanks, I don't think I am a POS or that anyone really is POS.  I was referring more to their (my former) lifestyle.  I don't know exactly how to explain it though.

Like I said I think it is harsh, maybe even a bit cruel I won't deny that.  It's what I needed though, to make the tough changes in my life.

There is a wrench for every nut. What works for one will not work for another. I understand throwing around terminology... but I also know there are lurkers reading this and had their worst fear confirmed... that indeed everyone knows exactly what they think they are. THEY ARE FLAT OUT WRONG. And for those that actually say it, and stand by it... well I have no use for them in my life.

Yeah, we're coming to a point of contention here again.  An obese person is responsible for having become obese.  You don't just wake up one day obese by no fault of your own.  You have made many, many decisions over years to get there.

Rogillo talks about not knowing how powerful cravings can be.  It doesn't matter.  You either give in or you don't so it's still your responsibility to figure out a way to stop it.  If you can't help yourself and your impulse control is that bad that it's making you into a sick person, go to see a mental health professional to figure out why because what you need to treat at that point is your BEHAVIOR.  

And it's not like breathing air; if you don't breathe air you die.  If you're craving bad food or too much food and you don't indulge you're not going to die.

Where is this whole POS thing coming from in this thread?

I hope that people can realize if ONE person says something like that in this thread, it doesn't mean everyone else thinks that.

I know someone might think I'm a d-bag.  More than one probably.  But because one person insults me, or criticizes my thinking, doesn't mean EVERYONE thinks that about me.  What a bully says about/to me?  Doesn't matter.

I don't think people that are dealing with obesity are a POS.  Just dealing with difficult issues.  I never said that, never will.  No one else said that in this thread save one person.  But if people dealing with obesity assume I think that of them even when I don't, of course they resent me.  There are probably far more people that have empathy or compassion for people dealing with issues, but if they get lumped in with the people that call names?  It just as an unfair a judgement.

I agree with all of that for sure.  That's why I think treating the mental component of the issue should be the first step.  Not, let me go to my MD and think that weight loss meds or surgery will be the cure for my problem.

I guess in a way what I've been saying is that a mental health professional should be your first line of defense if you just can't stop behaving in a way that is causing you to be obese and you've tried to do it on your own.

Let the MD's treat the myriad of conditions that come along with obesity and they really already have been; for example, if obesity has caused diabetes, the doctor treats the diabetes as long as you have it, fat or not.  The disease is diabetes--not obesity and it should be treated as a doctor would treat diabetes.  I just don't see how calling obesity a disease will change that aspect of things.

Let it be a behavioral treatment for the actually obesity itself.