http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto...icle1498276.ece

I find this article and the tone of the journalist highly annoying, and to someone who is super obese and struggled desperately with their weight, it is highly insulting. Naturally slim, moneyed, privately educated journalists like her, may believe that to solve obesity one simply needs to push away from the table and control one's eating. Many of us on this forum know it is often not that simple.

How exactly do you tell if obesity is self inflicted or not? Obesity experts will tell you that obesity is very complex, affected by multiple factors. How would you implement a law that only gave rights to obese people who have not inflicted their obesity on themselves. Science is in no way far enough advanced on the causes of obesity to be able to determine all the causes and the extent to which each one impacts the individual's weight with any certainty. And indeed, a smoker who cannot make it up stairs due to lung disease CAN claim for reasonable adaptations to be made for them at work, even though it is relatively certain that their condition is self inflicted - but we don't look at it that way, do we, because smoking, for all the damage it causes, doesn't incite the hysterical disgust and moralising that obesity does.

And if this journalist was interested, the EU court made no new legislation, and they didn't even decide on whether this man was made redundant due to his obesity. What they did say was that in Europe it is perfectly OK to dismiss someone because they are obese - there is no discrimination law that makes obesity a protected characteristic. The EU court also said that that the court in Denmark needed to consider whether disability was a factor in the redundancy, which is not allowed to be considered. They reiterated that obesity can rise to the level of a disability and in such cases, disability discrimination has to be considered. Just as a smoker who has lung disease would have to be considered as to whether their condition was disabling.

The European court ruling did not say that the obese couldn't be fired, or made redundant, they simply made the point that obesity can be disabling.

So regarding adaptations in the work place, what does this journalist think should be done? Should reasonable adaptations not be made? In which case there would be more unemployed obese people which would lead to another moralising article on the obese taking advantage of the welfare state - at which point the disabled obese are faced with the opinion that they shouldn't have adaptations made at work, they shouldn't burden the health care or welfare systems, and they are struggling to lose weight on the government's 'eat less, move more' campaign - there doesn't seem to be any options left apart from suicide - I say that sarcastically, but it certainly seems reminiscent of Scrooge saying that the poor should just die and 'decrease the surplus population'.

Yes there was a preliminary ruling that suggested that disability could only be considered in BMI above 40, but I suspect that this was amended because otherwise, you have a situation that because obesity is not protected with regards to discrimination, it means that employers could monitor the BMI of their employees and fire them before they reach a BMI of 40, thus what is supposed to be a protection ends up making things worse for the morbidly obese, who would find it much more difficult to find jobs or stay employed. The obese already have a difficult enough task in finding employment, with similarly or lesser qualified applicants being preferred over the obese applicant.

And if this journalist really thinks that employees will suddenly start overeating to become obese enough not to fire, then she's an idiot. By her own logic, anyone gaining weight would make themselves targets for firing BEFORE their obesity became disabling.

And for anyone who has not been disabled by their weight - obesity related disability is not some wonderful state where we're given extra rights and can gorge to our heart's content, it is a terrible place of comments, hostile stares, shouted insults, fear, pain, exhaustion, poor health, isolation, shortened life expectancy and horribly low self esteem. To believe that anyone would want to live like this is insane.

rant over

I had difficulty culling any decent information from this article because the tone of the writing was so snide and morally superior.

And she has this preconceived notion that those two obese individuals she mentions cannot ever lose that weight except through surgery. So much so wrong on so many levels.

YIKES. so sad. I experienced this kind of attitude when I was in the office with my husbands surgeons nurse. We were discussing the new insurance rules. She looked at me and just said she thought they were good as we all should take responsibility for our health AND WEIGHT. I looked her right in the eye and said some people have issues. I told her I was waiting to get back on insurance so after 7 years of no meds I was finally going to get my thyroid back. I had to quit thyroid because I had no insurance. She was like Yah Right.

Believe me I was miserable being as heave as I was at 230. I was eating 1000 to 1300 calories a day and because my hubby had been sick with pancreas I had been doing ALL the workaround here for a year and a half. when I went to the doc finally got my thyroid back I was able to lose 10 pounds on low calorie. then started to gain back. finally I went low carb high fat and now have lost 22 pounds. 12 pounds since Dec 3. Seems slow to me but I am not giving up. Every pound down is a blessing.

I hope I get to go back to see that witch nurse this September. Hoping I am much thinner. And I will rub it in her face CICO is NOT always the right way for every one. This hurt me to the core. People just do not know.

I know this is not disability related on my rant. More of just the common thinking of so many. There is more than just what you put in your mouth that effects your weight. How about stress and months of nights going with out sleep caring for hubby because he was totally helpless for about 6 months. It all adds up and there she stood in her size 2 or less body ragging on me. AAARRRGGGHHHHHHH

Leemack sorry this hurt your feelings.

I am almost 70, and my mother put me on my first diet when I was 9 years old. I've spent my entire life using every known diet to keep from becoming morbidly obese.

I still remember thirty years ago seeing a notation on the doctor's file, "Post menopausal, obese female." What a shock that was to me. BMI, not how we look, determines how we are labeled.

I try and try. I deprive myself. I exercise. No matter which diet I use, if I get my BMI below 30 it's only for a short period of time. I've been using Atkins (primarily) since 1972, and strictly for the past 7 or 8 years, yet I don't lose lbs.

I have studied nutrition so that I can be educated about what I eat and why. I am not obese because I haven't tried to be thin. I'm not morbidly obese because it has been my life's work to be healthy and try to be thin.

It's really hard to read an article like this one. Those who are naturally thin have always sneered at the rest of us. They think it's easy for all because it's easy for them. Such people are verging on psychopathic because they lack empathy. This is the world we live in, where the last people it's okay to point and laugh at are the fat. Us.

Many people who are overweight with no thyroid disorder will end up hypothyroid if they do what is necessary to lose weight--at least, until they gain back much of the weight. Relative hormonal normalcy at unreduced body-weight can mask the fact that a person needs to be "overweight' to remain normal in that respect.

I think we've seen this person's fat-shaming attitudes before. Lovely, isn't it?

My story is similar to bluesinger's. I was medically obese for a relatively short period of time twenty years ago when I allowed "oh what the h*ll" to be my approach to personal nutrition. I do not know what might be the upper limit, if any, on fat accumulation in my body, because I've always intervened in one way or another. No one who knows me, including my current husband, would ever suspect that I am an obese person in a normal-looking body.

Unfortunately this experience can result in a kind of smugness. "I do it--so can you!" So I am continually cultivating a more compassionate attitude towards the effects of genes, disease, ignorance (absence of reliable nutritional education), economic stress (the pressure for convenience), and other contributors that cause so many to give up in the battle against obesity.

Unless the hearts of humanity can be changed, anti-discrimination laws dealing with sex, skin color, size, religion, you-name-it, will be a messy attempt at a solution.

One reason I like this forum is that here there is help and support for those who are trying to overcome in a fight with Mother Nature.

Bluesinger, O was also heavy since I was about 4 years old. I can remember being sent to school with jello and cottage for lunch. My adoptive mother did not know any better. Unknown to her she was feeding my addiction to sugar.

Shades65, my Mother switched my diet between cottage cheese and pears and boiled eggs and grapefruit - none of which I like very much to this day.

Just had a conversation with my friend this AM. She is convinced her starvation diet is so much better for her to lower her cholesterol. So many just do not get it. I am not even going to try to explain it. She told me eating all that fat will raise my cholesterol to terrible levels. Guess time will tell. Meanwhile I will keep doing my LCHF and not ever hungry. She said she does not miss her butter and mayo.Fine I do not miss my bread and spuds. We still be best friends.

Sad, and points to the fact that our global society lacks a fundamental understanding of nutrition and what stimulates a person to eat. Will power is useless when consuming foods that continually stimulate appetite and mask the normal metabolic processes that would alert the brain when satiety is achieved. I'm convinced this will change over time; however, there is a strong socioeconomic system in place that must change if we are ever to successfully realize a transition to a healthier WOE. That is the real battle in this case, as it spawns attitudes like the one expressed by the journalist who wrote the article.

And a quick update. Not gloating because this is a very good friend of mine with the CICO attitude. She had a doctor appointment Tuesday. We have the same doctor. Her cholesterol is sky high again. She is two years older than I am so the first year she went to him with high cholesterol he said go on statins. She said she would do it with diet and within the next year she was able to do so. Following year she was high again and told doc she would bring it down with her CICO diet again. Nope it did not work for her and he was not nice to her about it. She has a prescription for statins now. she said she has not picked it up yet. We talked again about the LCHF and she said there is no way she can give up sugar.

I think it is so sad. I hope she can change her mind about the sugar. If I can do it any one can. I am a sugar addict and I know this. One bite and I can not control myself. For me it is all or nothing. So sugar is out. Seems so crazy to be so addicted to some thing seemingly so harmless and yet it has caused me years of fat misery.

Finally broke my stall and down to the lower end of one more pound about to tip over to the next. I will not change my meters until I lose the next just to be sure it does not bounce back up on me. I do not think it will.