The Fascinating Turnip

Encouraging the consumption of healthier products, advising about the dangers of obesity, etc. (and granted, this is already being done) seems like the best option. The only thing I disagree with in that statement is that "how it happened is irrelevant". I presume that what you meant was that it's preposterous to dwell on the past and to berate overweight people for what they've been doing, but it really is important to know how it happened and how it is happining, exactly because, as you yourself said: "there is no one thing that leads to being overweight". The plethora of factors that are contributing to a person being overweight needs to be analysed so that measures can be taken, it seems to me.

someonecompletelyrandom

Well, imagine you live in a country where it's much easier to become an alchoholic than to not be. Imagine everywhere you go you're being bombarded with adverts for liquor. What if your friends go out drinking every other night, some of them are themselves alchoholics. You look around and MOST people are alchoholics.

When do we stop blaming the individual an start accepting responsibility as a society for pushing an unhealthy lifestyle on people? Why do we expect everybody to be so strong as to stand up to that pressure? Some people just aren't strong enough.

midnight rain

I have. Eat right, exercise, be healthy. The internet is a wonderful tool for this kind of thing.

Chances are, how it happened is how to correct it.

midnight rain

Sounds like Darwin in action haha. No one's making anyone do anything. The fact is, the info is out there and if you're willing to look, you can live healthy and be a healthy weight, as long as you don't have a legitimate underlyig cause.

someonecompletelyrandom

That's stupid. The "info is out there".... Somewhere.

What do you think the ratio of McDonalds, WalMart, Cola, and Pizza Hit advertisements are to anything promoting eating right or exercisizing.

Big food corporations in the U.S. promote unhealthy eating. I don't believe in this libertarian ideal of personal responsibility. Sure, you could dodge a sword flinging toward your neck, but I don't expect anyone to. If your head rolls on the floor, I don't blame you– I blame the fucking crazy guy with the sword.

Personal responsibility is an important aspect of life, but when a society exerts so much pressure on somebody–How can you honestly blame them for giving in?

Just because you're strong enough, you'll look at the weak with disdain?

Paedantic Basterd

Alright, I will share with you a personal story, and try and make it quick because I've got to go to work.

I'm not going to share my life's story, but when I was a child I was raised by a single mother and my grandmother, and my mother more often than not didn't know how to say no to me as a result of her absences due to her working to support my existence. My grandmother, a woman of 70 years, did not have the strength or energy to play with a child, so I spent a lot of time indoors.

By high school age, I was overweight, because teenagers have no grasp of the consequences of drinking too much soda or not brushing their teeth, and a long term mistake is difficult to correct, particularly without the necessary knowledge. Then, depression. Graduating year my grandmother died, and four of my very good friends broke up with me, on top of trying to graduate and typical troubles that overwhelm high school students.

This depression continues off and on for three years, with a couple brief boughts of healthy living in between that did me a lot of necessary good. I know a lot of people here have struggled with depression and know how hard it is to get out of bed to go to work or class. Now imagine trying to get up and go for a run or hit the gym for a couple of hours. Didn't happen. I spent 11 or more hours sleeping every day.

Fortunately that passed, and in better spirits, motivation returned to do better with my life. Unfortunately, my mother fell ill with cancer, and this past summer while she received treatment out of town, I supported the household by working 7 days a week, well over 40 hours. I simply did not have the energy, physically or emotionally, to then work on myself during this period of time.

And so it seems I've gone to seed a bit, which I'm not happy about, but am slowly but surely working at. Certainly, various aspects of this story can be chalked up to my poor decisions, however not once in my life have accusations or generalizations motivated me to do anything. If anything, I lose interest in a person's advice when it is swaddled in judgment.

I am not a person who seeks sympathy or wishes to validate myself with excuses, and I believe that's been clear to anyone who has spoken to me over the year and a half I've posted here. What I've shared here are simply facts of my life, and they will continue to be factual whether or not I work to reverse their effects. The point I wish to make is simply that you can't put any human in a box, and a discussion on lifestyle that fails to take individuals into account is ultimately not worthwhile.

midnight rain

There is only so much that can be done for someone, short of spoon feeding them healthy foods. The nutrition labels are clearly printed on the food, why should we have to baby full grown adults because they still haven't learned that actions come with consequences? Do you think smokers aren't responsible when they get lung cancer?

I think you're vastly overstating the societal pressure. Fatness is not encouraged in our society, healthy living is. I'll never understand someone who can so mindlessly follow an advertisement and not understand what the overall agenda of an ad is in the first place. I don't hold contempt for weak minded people, I pity them to be honest.

midnight rain

You command my respect for that alone.

I have a problem with fat people that don't want to do anything about it but make excuses, and drive up health care costs in the process.

Guybrush

I don't find your example that relevant. As long as you're aware it's not good for you, but you keep doing it, then it is still your choice. I'm not saying "don't overeat" or "don't drink alcohol", just that you should accept responsibility and not act like a complete victim and blame everyone/everything else but yourself if your lifestyle choices leads to you getting overweight or turning into an alcoholic.

If you'd been fed lies your whole life that being obese was good and healthy and something one should achieve with all the best interests in mind, then you could blame someone else.

I'm not writing this from a purely selfish point of view. In the end, if you don't take responsibility yourself, then it's only harder to do something about it. Taking responsibility is often the first step in helping you turn your life/situation around.

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Something Completely Different

someonecompletelyrandom

Again, this isn't about personal responsibility. If you've failed to exercise proper self control, yes– it was your failure and you are ultimately at fault–but in a society which encourages failure, how can you really expect that much of people?

It's like drinking heavily in front of an alchoholic and blaming him for his relapse. Yes, the desicion to drink again was his– but what was it influenced by?