This ^^^

I think people are all making great points, I have come across this attitude a lot lately too Wannabeskinny.

We are all in control of our own lives and choices, yes.
If we make excuses for ourselves, then we have no one else to blame but ourselves, yes.

BUT. My life, my choices, my problems. My fatness is not an invitation for every Tom, Dick and Harry to take one look at my body and say "We'll you're an average fat American. You must be lazy and don't care about yourself enough to take care of this problem! Look at me, I don't eat snacks and I work out twice a week and I'm fit. The problem is people don't want to bother with giving up their goodies and getting off the couch."

While some of that may be true, weight is so much more complex than that. What irks me is people make it sound like it's SO EASY, and we must be idiots for not figuring out how to take the weight off. We are all here to tackle our own demons, our own inner voices that tell us to eat that extra treat, or not exercise until tomorrow. And they all manifest from different places, and we all deal with it differently. Some of us take a no nonsense attitude of "This is my responsibility, and my fault I'm this size so I'm going to do something about it!" ...and that's truly great. I really think people should be strong mentally to lose weight. BUT that's not how we all deal with this. I personally feel yes I'm gonna own up that my diet and lack of exercise have contributed to my weight, but there are other things. My family is fat. All of them. Genetically I pack on weight fast and keep it. Culturally I was brought up to never 'waste food'. Clean off your plate, don't leave food behind because when we waste food we waste what little money we have. These might sound like "excuses" to people, but this is stuff I didn't have control of... genetics I'll never have control of. I have had to learn to accept that my body has a predisposition to being fat. I have to work 10x as harder as my naturally skinny friends to be their size... and even then I'll probably always carry some weight on me. That's ok, I've come to accept that some things I can't control but I can learn to cope with them. Yes, I make a conscious effort what goes into my mouth... but the behaviors of putting things into my mouth need to re-wired. It's a battle, that's 26 years of bad habits to break, and new habits to form. I'm not saying woe is me, pity me. I'm saying, save me your analyzing of why I'm fat. I don't need anyone fat or skinny telling me what I need to do to lose weight, or what kind of person I must be because I'm fat. Especially when those people don't know the first thing about what it's like to be born and raised fat.

TLDR; Quit passing judgement on individuals based on a limited understanding you have of group of people. Show some empathy, and realize just because something works for you doesn't mean it's the solution to everyone's problem.

Wannabe, that whole situation just sucks. I have minimal patience at times and would have like given her some choice words. I think a couple of people have mentioned that she's likely projecting her own insecurities/frustration/etc on "fat people". Maybe she's jealous we got to eat more then she does? :D Hope you've shaken it off- you got plenty of support here :)

Side note, everyone's input here has been awesome to read.

OK, at the risk of having tomatoes pelted at me, I'll jump in and share some of my thoughts on this topic.

On the one hand I believe that weight management is not a level playing field. Differences in physiology aside, some of us like food a lot more than others, find it comfortable rather than unpleasant to have a very full stomach, and are inclined to turn to food for comfort and stress relief. For such people (raising hand), weight loss and maintenance are undoubtedly harder than for people who are disinterested or picky eaters and dislike the feeling of fullness. It takes more willpower for us to lose weight than it takes for the non-foodies.

On the other hand, I do not put eating disorders in the same category as physiologic conditions like MS or rheumatoid arthritis. No matter how much we're drawn to food, no matter how difficult we find it to resist, we CAN make the choice to walk away. I see eating disorders as ingrained behavioral patterns that exist in a cultural context, rather than fixed neurologic impairments. Our culture chooses to define compulsive binging as a disease. Another culture might define it as a moral failing. Both views have partial validity, IMO.

It's not fashionable to speak of willpower these days. Instead, we talk about how our neurotransmitters (or low leptin levels or high ghrelin levels) made us do it. I come back to my earlier point: we may have leptin or ghrelin or a difficult childhood working against us, but we still have a choice -- and I say this as someone who's made the "wrong" choice on countless occasions, including today.

To me, it's much more comforting to think I lack willpower than to think I have a disease. After all, willpower can improve with practice.

Freelance

First of all, I'm sorry to say that part of me agrees with your friend. I've been working at losing weight continually for nearly two years now and I'm getting sick and tired of thinking in terms of eating disorders and thinking about food and exercise all the time. It's like having a second full time job! Also, I think overweight people (barring medical factors)will stay overweight until they really do want to change as you need to have that motivation to achieve weight loss. I think this is a perfectly reasonable thing to say although maybe hard to hear - how many threads have we had here on what your 'final push' to really start losing weight was?

However, it sounds to me like your friend is almost jealous and maybe feeling a little smug. It sounds like 'Hey, those people with eating disorders have an excuse for losing weight/binge eating with no effort whereas *I* have no such excuse *I* just work really hard'. I don't agree with that line of thinking at all but I can see (from the perspective of trying to lose weight) how when you are so mired in thinking about your own eating/exercise you lose sight of what is 'normal' for everyone else and things that are 'challenges' for others seem easy to you. I think your friend does not appreciate the level of work involved in dealing with ed or losing weight at the moment. I wonder if maybe your friend had an eating disorder or a weight problem at some point and is now in denial due to being in a better place physically?

I just wanted to say that the above isn't true. The traffic light system is definitely still in operation here in the UK. Its not on all food products but I don't think it had ever been. I must admit to finding it useful when I'm in a rush, that I just glance at the 'fat' and 'salt' reading and if I see Green circles (green=good) I'll just buy something without reading much further :o I can post photos if you want to see it in action. Sorry for the derailment!

I'm also One Of Those People, I was born hungry and I've stayed hungry. I love high calorie food and I'm a big fan of the soothing feeling it gives me when I eat it in excess. I believe that I was always destined to be one of the steady level 15% of obese people that existed until the 1970s.

However, since the 1970s obesity levels have doubled. I can't see any reason why, during a time of plenty, twice as many people like me have been born. People's troubles aren't any worse, poverty isn't a factor, obesity has doubled across all class and racial groups and there hasn't been a big change in the genetic pool that we all swim out of. Something else has happened.

I battle with my own obesity every day, part of that is knowing that I'm in charge of everything that goes into my mouth but it has taken me a fairly long time to educate myself to the point where I know exactly what's on that fork. Food producers have spent the last thirty years doing their best to keep that information from me, from all of us and making it as easy as possible for everyone to consume an excess of calories, not just people like me who want to eat to excess. In most of the world, governments have stood by and allowed this to happen, in the tiny pockets where governments have put food labeling in place, they don't have the same numbers of obese people as we have in the US and UK. When children are given the facts about basic health prevention measures, they grow up heeding that advice.

As for menus, some days I want that 16oz steak and on those days, nothing is going to come between me and that steak, other days I'm a bit more committed to maintaining my healthy weight and I will opt for the chicken salad but I think that if a restaurant is going to make the chicken salad more calorific than the steak, it's only fair that they warn me. I take responsibility for my own choices but it's unfair to ask me to make the correct choices without giving me the information I need to make an informed choice.

No one left my generation floundering to do their own research on the toxicity of tobacco products, we were told that there was a reasonable expectation that smoking would led to death. We were told the likely outcome of unsafe sex practices and given the means to counter them. No one has stopped adults making their own decisions but they make much smarter ones when the know the consequences.

Let's take cigarettes. They use to be cool and good for you and not harmful. And people smoked by boatloads. And there were ads on TV.

Then the messaging all changed. Do people still smoke? Yes. Did smoking go down? Yes. Did Americans magically all change? No. The environment changed.

I totally acknowledge that my motivation and willpower and choices are setting me on a different path. But my old path was aided and abetted by government and buisnesses. To not acknowledge that is the same as doing nothing about cigarettes and if we had done that how many more lives ruined and destroyed?

And you should all feel grateful you have the resources for choices and I feel grateful as well. Many people do live on food islands, you can look it up.

And I again say who here in conversations with other people find individuals are not being blamed? It is the dominant narrative. You are at party no one blurts out McDonalds made me fat.

You know what? In MY conversations I say I used to eat way too much fast food. But I also then say I could never understand why I was so hungry so soon after. So tired and had so much lack of energy. Would a warning on each McDonalds saying high carbs is known to lead to over-eating in many individuals and lack of energy? Studies show eating fast food once a week leads to X percentage increase in heart disease? Yes it would have made a difference. That is environment.

At the most extreme and this is reality in many poorer communities the only playgrounds are at McDonalds. And as others have mentioned, thank you, millions spent on making food as addictive as possible. Why isn't that regulated? Food can kill like drugs. Do we allow coke makers to get away without threat of penalty making their products as addictive as possible?

And then for years focusing on fat as the main problem by the govt what you are told in school not sugar. I personally came to the conclusion that was wrong. But you are forced to go beyond the mainstream.

While this is very true and many folks do live on food islands, many more people live on information islands. I've been reading 3FC for years now and I'd say that, at least, once a month, someone starts a thread describing an exercise regime that, makes me feel exhausted reading, and asks why they haven't lost weight or have only lost a couple of pounds. The misinformation put about by the food lobby that our weight issues are as a result of moving less and not so much about eating their cruddy products, has trickled through society and become an accepted 'truth'.

Some of the replies they get are sympathetic and informative, some of the replies are contemptuous and informative but I think that the same question is still being asked time and time again, proves that information about good choices for weight management still aren't getting through to everyone.

I think that people tend to think about responsibility in absolute terms and while the buck always stops with an individual, society can put things in place things that make it easier and more likely that an individual will make a good decision. We all know that drug dealers make a lot of money but that dealing drugs is a morally dubious occupation, society helps make our decision not to deal drugs easier by giving out long prison terms to people who get over the moral hurdle. It's the same for folks who drive drunk and those who beat their spouses. It's not about advocating a nanny state, it's about giving the greatest amount of freedom to the greatest number of people.

This^^

Personal responsibility plays a huge role. But to just say it's all that and nothing else, is BS. There are a number of diseases that affect weight, not just eating disorders. My cousin weighed 98 lbs in high school. After three kids, she weighs 110 now. She eats more than I do, worse than I do, and never exercises. By the original girl's argument, she should weigh 400 lbs. She doesn't because she has thyroid problems. Those same problems are in reverse in her sister, who eats a balanced meal, has been on multiple diets, and barely maintains if she isn't starving herself. So no. It's not just stop eating and you lose.

Some people maybe, but not all. To over generalize and lump all fat people into one category is closed minded and shows her ignorance.

I think that dividing people up into 'deserving' and 'undeserving' fat is also a mistake, obesity isn't a moral issue, it's a personal and public health issue. I have many moral failings, the amount of cake I shove into my mouth isn't one of them.

I saw the pictures, the burns are horrible. Of course I know coffee is hot and try to not let it spill on me, but would not think that if spilled it would cause those burns. If I were aware that an establishment would serve me coffee so dangerously hot that my skin would burn like that-to the bone! I WOULD NOT PURCHASE THE COFFEE! Poor woman, and feel sorry for the at least 700 other victims.

Whatever works for an individual I think is great. I accepted that I had to change, I had to make better decisions day in and day out: lifestyle changes.

It also helps me, and this is just me, it helps fuel me, motivates me as I mentioned earlier. 'Knowing' or what I believe to be the morally void decisions of the food companies in the U.S. and either the complicity or incompetence of USDA helps fuel my fire to change. It adds to my motivation not to want to buy their products or support them. When they do make healthy products then I support that. Again, thankful, I have the ability for choices. I do have fresh and organic produce close to where I live.

If someone else has a fire fueled by 'blaming themselves' go ahead. If it works, awesome. I also am not happy even furious at times for my past decisions. But I personally also have this other context that helps me. Not at all offended nor is it my business if someone else doesn't have that context or believe in it for themselves.

Where I feel it is my business is the shared environment that affects us all. I do NOT want my child growing up in the same toxic environment that my generation did. I am going to help make it better. Others might not agree, fine, but that is what I am going to work for as well as better personal choices for me and my family.

What do you propose? Required labels on candy bars? I noticed in an earlier post you suggested McDonald's would have warning labels that too many carbs can cause you to be lethargic. I'm not trying to be a smart alec. I'm really curious what you are suggesting in terms of solutions.

The way to go would not be quite that. The warning label should be based on the many studies showing how much the risk of heart disease goes up with consumption of fast food. Many studies show 20% more with once per week.

I am just old enough to remember Marlboro man commercials on TV. There should be no fast food commercials on kids programming I believe.

I think regulating food is one step. Dr Lustig makes a very valid point that at one time vaccinations were a hot button topic, but now it's accepted by all people. At one time it was unthinkable to regulate cigarettes now we expect it!! People lashed out when they were required to wear seatbelts but now nobody questions it. Laws are made when they are for the betterment of public health and people adjust.

Now we need more regulation when it comes to food. I don't know about warning labels but at the very least we need more education and more information. I think sugar should be taxed, just like cigarettes. They tried to pass a law in NY that sugary drinks more than 16oz should be subject to additional tax, but it won't pass. People don't want their rights taken away but on the other hand who's looking out for out health?

I'm not sure that the food itself has to be regulated, just the labeling. Most of us are unable to eyeball processed or pre-prepared food to guess the calories. The traffic light system work well here for the retailers that use it, the only problem is that as it's not a legal requirement, so some retailers choose not to.

For those who haven't heard of the system, on the front of processed food packaging there are a set of traffic lights, red for stop, amber for think about it and green for go, that relate to the calories, fat, saturated fat, salt and fiber content of the food. Underneath the 'traffic light' the content is shown as a percentage of the RDA. As people tend to grab at the thing with the most green lights, food manufactures have consistently reduced the fat, salt and calorie levels of their processed food. There have been no reductions in the amount of food that folks buy or how much they spend but there has been a decrease in fat, calorie and salt consumption.

Additionally, it has been proved time and time again that most of us are members of the clean plate club, we accept that what we are served is a reasonable portion and do our best to eat it all. However, we don't read the small print and totally miss the 'contains 2 and a half portions' label on the back of the packet. If things like candy, soda and chips were served in single sized portions it would massively cut back on calorie consumption.

It would also help if food retailers had a more transparent pricing structure, then when I went to buy a candy bar, instead of getting one (or another whole packet) free, it would be much faired and easier to get it half price, then buying another one would be my choice, rather than something that I went in to a panic about missing out on.

I think part of the problem is that nobody can completely agree on how to fix the problem. Also, the villain in the war on obesity changes quite often...sugary drinks, fast food, fat, carbs, calories, not enough exercise, sugar, HFCS, wheat/gluten, huge portions, etc. But, there are a lot of villains. Different ones for different people even. There needs to be more focus on the solutions than the causes. It would also help if there weren't so many contradictions about The Right Way to lose weight, also. There is no absolute right way. Pick a plan and stick to it. Most of the plans will work if you work them correctly.

Due to huge campaigns against drugs and smoking people are a lot more educated about those things. It doesn't end the problem, but the awareness does lead many to try to break the habit. I bet there is hardly a person alive who doesn't know that smoking causes cancer. Can we say the same thing is true about obesity and cancer? Obesity is often linked to diabetes and heart disease. But, not as much about cancer. Fear is a powerful motivator. Maybe some of those scared straight type commercials about obestiy being one of the leading causes of cancer would have an effect. There are absolutely less smokers now than there were before people were aware of the cancer it causes. Was it because of the label, the education, the scared straight type comercials, the campaigns, the environment, the higher luxury taxes?? It was a combination of all of those things most likely.

Great post, and I think it nails it in terms of the diet industry. How many of us in the 80s and 90s were swayed by diet foods? How many people are addicted to diet cola? Fat free mayo? Reduced fat potato chips (anyone remember Oleastra?), artificial flavors, artificial sweeteners, the list of weightloss gimmicks that have treated human beings as guinea pigs for the latest chemicals is long and terrifying. The manufacturing of food such as chicken nuggets (is it really chicken - NO), beef patties (animal byproducts washed in ammonia), nitrates, nitrites, the genetic modification of crops, the injection of preservatives to sustain shelf life, modify the color, enhance the flavor, the exhorbitant amount of money research spent on making a cheetoh just crispy enough but not too crispy, just salty enough but not too salty is something that is being done TO US in order to expand THEIR profits.

Is it a coincidence that obesity runs rampant? That diseases such as crohn's, celiac, metabolic syndrome are reaching record highs, the rise of peanut and other allergies, asthma and other environmental attacks on our bodies are just due to our own faults? There are certain ingredients, chemicals, methods of growing food that are banned in other countries doesn't concern you? The inhumane ways that farm animals are raised, the extreme power of the corn lobby on legislation, these are not things that play a role in our health?

Like I said, I don't shun responsibility from myself, I know fully well how I have participated in my own demise. But when you live in a country where the almighty dollar reigns supreme over humanity you're going to fall victim to gimmicks on your quest to health and many people fell for it, I remember very clearly the moment I decided to switch to diet cola to save on calories and how my weight spiraled out of control shortly thereafter. I'm sorry but the fat-free cheese and the reduced fat stuff did nothing but harm us.

A tax on sugar would be wonderful! I am all for Sin Taxes! At least it will make one stop and think, "How bad do I want it??"

And I am not a calorie counter by any means, yet seeing that a small hamburger the size of my palm is actually 600+ calories made me balk more than once and think twice about fast food!

Great post as well. Other countries have very successfully said to food companies you will do business within this context. Do they make profits? Of course. But not the expense of the vast health consequences we have here. So maybe a very few aren't getting as wealthy but the overall wealth in the country goes up many fold because of lower health care. And the overall quality of living, being alive goes up there also.

Ask people in Haiti how well almost no government and regulation are. That's what they have there. It isn't some nirvana. The same companies not caring about you or me we have here in the U.S. with even fewer or no regulations? Yeah that will work well.....not.

There's also things cities can do to make physical activity more accessible for people. And I'm not just talking about physical education. Sidewalks! Parks! Things like that.

This is particularly harmful. I think of myself as someone strong, resilient, hard working and motivated. You wouldn't know that about me just by looking at me. My outside tells people I'm a lazy slob. I think I might have the same mindset, I just assume that thinner people work harder than I do, don't they?

Wannabeskinny, it sounds like the person who's 115lbs and complaining has her own crippling food-control problems. Eating disorders exist in men and skinny people too

It's true she may have her own issues, they may or may not be with food. In my observations nobody is perfect. A person may find it doable to maintain their weight, and resist temptations but may fail elsewhere in their lives. They may drink or gamble or have some mother vice. I don't know this person well, just enough to know that she has some string opinions and a strong personality. She clearly doesn't believe that eating disorders are real otherwise I don't think she would've said "I'm sick of hearing about eating disorders!" You wouldn't go around saying "I'm sick of hearing about cancer!" because you don't question it's validity. One of the hardest things for us to accept us that we CAN change. People are us and think that if we really wanted to change we could. All the guilt that comes with that is horrible.

I do think losing weight is much harder for some people. For example, I do not have a problem with gambling. I do gamble sometimes (it's fine, nothing awesome, I don't care for it really), then stop and don't think about it ever. I would NEVER say, "God, why can't so-called 'gambling addicts' just stop gambling. It's so easy - I don't have a problem with it at all. I work to be careful with my money, and so can they!" That's just stupid. And I've also never had a gambling problem, so I wouldn't spout off advice to people who do. What the heck do I know? And I would NEVER say it isn't a 'real problem,' that it's just people being lazy and having no willpower. That would be so ridiculous that I can't even. I feel similarly about people who have never struggled with weight or food. They don't really know.

Just my opinion.

I agree with several posters that we are ultimately responsible for a large part of our health. However, industries and governments and cultures can play a huge part in it.

For example, I don't think South Korea has a nation of stronger-willed, better people because their national adult obesity rate is so low (low single digits, in fact, though it is rising). I think that in general they do more things that promote a healthier weight; they eat more whole foods, less crap, walk more and take more public transportation. Why? Their culture/government/industries support it (not necessarily on purpose, but it works out that way).