Seriously, how is anyone dumb enough to be fat?

[Aractus]

Nutrition is often not explicitly taught in (American) schools.

Well it doesn't need to be taught in schools, after all it's adults that need to know it and not children. My point though is that we learn through experience

In fact they're so unaware that they try "fad diets" with no concept as to why it would or wouldn't work.

A great reason to advocate for a more skeptical and scientifically literate society.

Hmm, no. Not everyone is interested in science, and the socialist ideal doesn't appeal to me in the slightest.

Some people can't be bothered to change their habits or address their addictions or psychological reasons why they turn to food.

Right, but what you've just listed is three different things and they're not equal. Habits, Addictions, Psychological. The psychological aspect will normally take care of itself by changing behaviour.

Both of my parents have had bariatric surgery. My dad has recently begun putting weight back on. His response wasn't to stop his late night snacking on unhealthy, salty foods and replace his sugary, high-calorie fruit juice with water, nor was it to be more active and burn off the calories he is able to consume, it was to go get his lap band filled so he can't eat as much.

There's a placebo effect that goes along with lap band surgery, along with the psychology that the surgery will fix the problem on its own. In fact I've seen countless medical doctors on TV even call it a "permanent solution", but it's certainly not permanent.

But just as your father has clearly re-stretched his stomach, you can also quite easily reduce the size of your stomach anytime without resorting to surgery. In fact just the hospitalization portion of the procedure would result in most obese people's stomach's shrinking while in hospital without any surgery taking place.

With that said it isn't a bad option, however I would certainly agree that people who would like the procedure should have to demonstrate 1-2 stone weight loss on their own first to show that they are committed to it before having the surgery (people who are morbidly obese physically can't have the surgery until they lose enough weight to allow for safe operation).

With all of this said however, I'll remind you that this thread is about putting the weight on in the first place more than weight loss, and what strikes me as fascinating is the fact that most people seem not to realize, and that is that it's harder and takes longer to gain weight than to lose weight!

In both my parents' cases, they don't want to make major life style changes, they don't want to have to give up the foods they love, they don't want to go to the gym every day and put the time and effort in, knowing that it's time and effort they'll have to devote for the rest of their lives to keep the weight off, they want to easy fix. They want results without the work.

Yep, sounds exactly like the overall problem. Most bulimics in fact do not lose weight for much the same reason: you can't expect positive results from negative behaviour.