Posted on 07/23/2004 6:40:59 AM PDT by .cnI redruM
It hurts me to admit this, but I'm one of those people that I'd never want to sit next to aboard a Saab Turboprop. It's not like I'm Michael Moore fat, but there's enough there there so that I won't be freezing if my bosses send me TDY to Alaska.
I can feel better now. Those bombing runs at Cici's Pizza and Ryan's Steakhouse are not my fault. I'm no longer a reprobate according to the people administering The Prescription Drug Panderation Act. I have a medical condition, and it's not an abnormal failure of the vital self-discipline gland.
I suffer from obesity. I was born with a genetic disposition to ruin other passenger's flights for them. I'm sorry, I just can't help it.
If I survive my immense girth for another 30 or so years, this is no longer just my problem. When I dotter into some physician's office and get told to turn off the stinkin' blog and go exercise, I'm sending you the bill for the diet pills!
So while I wither away to nothing and develop those octagenarian abs of steel, the poor, besieged taxpayer will be stuck picking up my tab. There's an evil part of my brain that says "You know what Stevo, those jogging shoes are getting pretty expensive..." Then that annoying conscience kicks in and reminds me that drinking three beers and eating one serving at dinner saves money compared to slamming down a twelve pack and getting asked to leave Cici's after they run out of plates and cheese sticks.
Wasting millions to cure the undisciplined and the lazy of obesity at the expense of the productive, lean and hard-working is such a perfect metaphor for The Tragedy of The Commons. We could be taking this money and curing childhood Luekemia.
But no, a bunch of lazy, sack-a--ed yuppies woke up one morning and didn't like what they saw in their mirrors. Someone commissioned a Zogby Poll and found out that a majority of Americans would like to blame something other than sloth and indigence for their sagging Coors' guts and shortness of breath.
Our government read those tea leaves, and Tommy Thompson, bless his pointy, little head, rode bravely to the rescue with sackfulls of other people's money. Can we really afford crap like this when we whine about spending $87 billion on the liberation of Iraq?
Amen.
Double Amen. One of my coworkers has a special needs kid who has luekemia. The fat butts should be required to take care of themselves. After all the answer to being fat is free. Shut your pie hole!
And before someone starts telling me 'but there is this' and 'there is that' I'd like them to explain this for me. To increase weight (I'm not talking water weight but fat) you have to intake more food than your caloric needs say you should, and thus your anabolism is greater than your catabolism, causing the extra to be stored as fat. It is not as if the fat is just appearing from nowhere! It HAS to be coming from somewhere .....eating. It's not as if it is just miraculously appearing and depositing itself in the body's subcutaneous layers! Even the 'cortisol' excuse is overdone ....stress will cause fat to be deposited around the stomach area, but that fat has to come from somewhere!!!!
However, eating less and excercising more is not something people want to hear. Why? Because it entails WORK! It is easier to buy pills that will magically 'make you lose weight and still eat pizza,' or slather your body with 'miracle creams' that will 'burn away fat while you sleep.'
My words may seem harsh, but i am willing to recant them and say mea culpa if some Freeper can tell me where and how i am wrong. How it is not an issue of eating less and excercising more. How it is something that is 'not the fault of the person.' I know there are some cases whereby the person's metabolism is heavily skewed, but that cannot be 65% of the population! Such conditions would be less than 2%, if even that. So, what about the rest of the obese/overweight cases.
(Sorry if i sound harsh .....that was not my intent).
Its not harsh...it is the truth.
Nothing bad is of our own doing. And only money (preferably someonelse's) can fix it.
It would be okay if the government realized that the cause of the disease "obesity" is far too many calories and lack of exercise --- and is far more prevalent in the government dependent class and takes steps to prevent the disease. Cut food stamps in half and limit them to foods --- eliminate the ability for food stamp purchasers to buy food in McDonalds and other fast food places, and to buy non-foods like soda drinks, candy, cookies, ice cream and all the other crap they fill up on. We could cut Medicaid way back if obesity-related diseases weren't such a problem.
Calesthenics are boring, and physically demanding activities that tend to be interesting also tend to have a potential risk involved and are discouraged in the name of "safety". We're being turned into a bunch of lardasses by people who don't want you doing anything unless it's absolutely safe, which is pretty much nothing.
The stereotype of a fat person being lazy did not happen by accident...
One question here, let's say for example the people are already on disability so they are sucking up a whole lot of money yearly. If you add up all of their benefits are from monthly checks, medicines, doctor's appointments, hospital stays, food stamps and in some cases subsidized housing it adds up to more than the cost of the gastric bypass surgery.
In most cases this reverses the other illnesses and with the weight loss they would no longer be eligible for disability and would have to go to work. They then become tax payers and productive citizens again. The success rate of the bypass surgery is what about 80% whereas all other methods of weightloss the failure rate is about 95%. Look at the lifetime cost and figure out which is cheapest and go from there.
don't forget playing the nintendo, and x-boxes as well.
Your logic that fat comes from eating is, of course, correct. Now take it further. Why are obese people eating too much? We do not usually eat because our bodies need fuel. My gosh, most of us have enough stored fuel for months! Obese people are eating out of both habit and out of psycological reasons. Financial help in learning new habits from dieticians is necessary. More importantly for most of us is learning the underlying resons why we overeat and dealing with it. No diet pill will take the place of doing that work.
I'm tired of people who are thin telling obese people to just cut back on calories. They don't understand. But the worse are people who have lost 20 or so lbs. They usually don't have the psycological problems that cause them to overeat, but they think because they lost their tiny bit of weight they are experts and can speak for the rest of us.
I don't like to admit that I have a disease that needs treatment. It's similar to drug or alcohol addiction in that way. Sheer force of will will not cure this epidemic. Physician assisted treatment is needed to help an obese person get healthy.
Being thin is not all it's cut out to be.........trying to put on weight for some people is as difficult as losing weight is for some other people.
I bet you have a great deal of sympathy for anyone with a weight problem - either too big or too small. My comment was aimed at thin people who are do not have to work as hard as either obese people or very thin people at maintaining a healthy weight.
Yes I do..............the most I have ever weighed in my life was 165 and that was 3 days before my daughter was born......within a week I was at 130 and within 6 weeks back below 115............and I am 5'10"
It doesn't matter what I eat or drink - my weight will rarely get over 120-125......so I will not find fault with anyone having a problem losing weight.
I realize your comments were not directed at anyone in particular, and please understand my comments were not directed at you personally.
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