By late 2007 I was at 250 and gaining rapidly. My doctor dx'd me as prediabetic. I adopted a low-carb diet. I lost weight. I'm no longer prediabetic. If I can change what I'm eating and reverse an impending health problem, then shouldn't I do that?



This is an interesting topic which I believe has been debated on this forum before. Is it better to tell yourself you have a medical condition over which you have no control? Or is that merely disempowering? If I believe I have some control over my condition, there's a risk I'll "blame" myself getting into that condition in the first place. But it also empowers me to make positive changes to avoid or reverse the condition.

I have a son with a serious mental illness so I spend some time on mental health forums. The "mental illness industry" has so strongly pushed the biological disease theory of mental distress - in order to sell drugs, IMO - that people simply accept that they have a "disease called X" and just swallow the little pills their doctors give them without asking what non-medical changes they can take to make themselves well.

I think the two situation are completely analogous. A condition that is part genetic and part environmental. A medical and pharmaceutical industry that has a stake in a particular point of view. And this article is so reminiscence of the campaigns to reduce the "stigma" of mental illness. And who's behind those campaigns? Big Pharm.

We should all accept that we're just the victims of bad genetics and therefore suffer from diseases over which we have no control, because they have a pill for that now. I'm sorry-- that's a truly disempowering message. That's the message that will cause hopelessness.



It's not merely overeating. It's overeating sugar.