Maher/Corden and obesity

[EgoDeath]

Go work at the VA for the day. Tell the homeless vet who lost one leg overseas and the other to diabetes after he came home; who is hospitalized because he was making suicide threats after his wife left him due to alcohol abuse; tell him he should eat a salad instead of that pizza because it’s “bad for him”.  Tell him you’re there to teach him about counting carbs.



Then come back and tell us what he threw at your head.

Point taken. Although, you're not telling me anything I haven't already thought about.

Now, let's think about this.

If we assume there's about 247 million adults in the US, that means there's about 96 million obese adults in the US. That's a lot of people. Out of those 96 million, how many do you think are as severely mentally ill as the example you give above? Maybe 10%? Maybe. And I get it. That sucks.

But the vast majority of those 96 million have enough control over their personal decisions to decide to lose weight. They're simply choosing not to. And that sucks.

I think it speaks to a larger issue we have with education about health & nutrition and an array of problems we have with mental health in the US. But to suggest that obese people are so severely mentally ill that they can't choose to eat a salad or go for a run is silly, and very condescending. It comes off like, "Oh, those poor fatties, they're too crazy to even help themselves." See? I can make silly, overly simplistic representations of your words too.

I think the uncomfortable fact is, tens of millions of people every single day choose to eat unhealthy foods and sit on the couch instead of exercise. It sucks. I wish it wasn't that way. But it's not my life and there's not much I can do about it, outside of personally trying to help someone with their diet and exercise.

A friend I helped get healthy described the same realization that I had somewhere along the way in my weight loss journey... He describes realizing that he had the choice all along. That it was never the physical abuse he discovered as a a kid that held him back. Or the bullying. Or the time a girl dumped him for a guy who was 100 pounds lighter. All of those were just excuses. And it doesn't mean those problems don't suck. They're terrible. But they are excuses, at the end of the day.

For me, it wasn't the depression, or the anxiety, or the self esteem issues... those were excuses.

Obviously, you don't just tell someone that, you have to let someone work through it. But that's the realization he came to. As did I. Strange.