EU Court rules Obesity can count as a disability

 
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 3:06 pm    Post subject: EU Court rules Obesity can count as a disability

Crazy. Would that ever work in the US? Isn't morbid obesity a disability?

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The European Court of Justice was asked to consider the case of a male childminder in Denmark who says he was sacked for being too fat.

The court said that if obesity could hinder "full and effective participation" at work then it could count as a disability.

The ruling is binding across the EU.


LINK

BTW, isn't this like rewarding fat people?
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 3:16 pm    Post subject: Re: EU Court rules Obesity can count as a disability

Grammer wrote:
Crazy. Would that ever work in the US? Isn't morbid obesity a disability?

Quote:
The European Court of Justice was asked to consider the case of a male childminder in Denmark who says he was sacked for being too fat.

The court said that if obesity could hinder "full and effective participation" at work then it could count as a disability.

The ruling is binding across the EU.


LINK

BTW, isn't this like rewarding fat people?
Im not sure all fat people want to be fat, especialy when its out of control. Its just like a drug addict who is battling deamons. Someone thats never been there or doesnt have any demons' cant comprehend battling with your inner self like that. I can see why people dont understand it, and its ok, but its a struggle.
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 3:19 pm    Post subject: Re: EU Court rules Obesity can count as a disability

kcxiv wrote:
Grammer wrote:
Crazy. Would that ever work in the US? Isn't morbid obesity a disability?

Quote:
The European Court of Justice was asked to consider the case of a male childminder in Denmark who says he was sacked for being too fat.

The court said that if obesity could hinder "full and effective participation" at work then it could count as a disability.

The ruling is binding across the EU.


LINK

BTW, isn't this like rewarding fat people?
Im not sure all fat people want to be fat, especialy when its out of control. Its just like a drug addict who is battling deamons. Someone thats never been there or doesnt have any demons' cant comprehend battling with your inner self like that. I can see why people dont understand it, and its ok, but its a struggle.


I understand that, but is giving them closer parking spots & the same special accommodations a blind person has fixing the problem?
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 3:31 pm    Post subject: Re: EU Court rules Obesity can count as a disability

Grammer wrote:
kcxiv wrote:
Grammer wrote:
Crazy. Would that ever work in the US? Isn't morbid obesity a disability?

Quote:
The European Court of Justice was asked to consider the case of a male childminder in Denmark who says he was sacked for being too fat.

The court said that if obesity could hinder "full and effective participation" at work then it could count as a disability.

The ruling is binding across the EU.


LINK

BTW, isn't this like rewarding fat people?
Im not sure all fat people want to be fat, especialy when its out of control. Its just like a drug addict who is battling deamons. Someone thats never been there or doesnt have any demons' cant comprehend battling with your inner self like that. I can see why people dont understand it, and its ok, but its a struggle.


I understand that, but is giving them closer parking spots & the same special accommodations a blind person has fixing the problem?

yeah, they need to make them at least walk a little. lol but lets face is some people get so big they cant walk. Its just a messed up situation all the way around. Im glad im not the one making laws. I see both sides. i stand somewhere in the middle. lol
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 4:00 pm    Post subject:

That just means Americans get priority parking spots.
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 4:34 pm    Post subject:

Morbid obesity has been held to be a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. There are some nuances in the case law, but I won't bore you with them.
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 5:28 pm    Post subject:

Aeneas Hunter wrote:
Morbid obesity has been held to be a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. There are some nuances in the case law, but I won't bore you with them.


This. I studied ADA for a bit, not surprising.
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 5:41 pm    Post subject:

Funny because just this morning (near a Walmart of course) I saw 2 people who I assume were mother and daughter, chugging along on motorized scooters. I wondered to myself if they were both suffering from a medical condition, or if they were just 2 lazy and insufferable turds. Sad.
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 5:52 pm    Post subject:

PLATNUM wrote:
Funny because just this morning (near a Walmart of course) I saw 2 people who I assume were mother and daughter, chugging along on motorized scooters. I wondered to myself if they were both suffering from a medical condition, or if they were just 2 lazy and insufferable turds. Sad.


Disgusting.
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 6:27 pm    Post subject:

Aeneas Hunter wrote:
Morbid obesity has been held to be a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. There are some nuances in the case law, but I won't bore you with them.


Just this morning a roomie was watching Carlos Mencia and he was bashing the ADA for this.. Said they should be forced to park as far as possible from the store so they can lose some weight walking to the store. Lol
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 7:25 pm    Post subject:

Not surprisingly first world problems. Consuming too much food, then crying its a disability if they are not.
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 7:31 pm    Post subject:

Absolutely ridiculous. You get fat one Twinkie at a time. It's a choice, not a disability.
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 8:01 pm    Post subject:

Eh, I have mixed feelings on the issue. I was pretty heavy at one point, but I lost most of it. This makes me unsympathetic to people who say that they can't control their weight.

On the other hand, there are some people who have actual medical conditions that cause morbid obesity. I wouldn't lump them in with people who have no self-control.

Furthermore, a lot of disabilities result from poor choices. If someone gets into a crash while hang gliding, we aren't going to say that his resulting paralysis isn't a disability. You can say the same thing about many cases of heart disease and diabetes, many back injuries, and even cancer for cigarette smokers.

Note that the EU case came up in the employment context, not the context of parking spaces. If the person can do the job, why should he or she be fired just because of weight? Under the ADA, if the employer can show a valid work-related basis, it's a different ballgame.
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 8:05 pm    Post subject:

Aeneas Hunter wrote:
Eh, I have mixed feelings on the issue. I was pretty heavy at one point, but I lost most of it. This makes me unsympathetic to people who say that they can't control their weight.

On the other hand, there are some people who have actual medical conditions that cause morbid obesity. I wouldn't lump them in with people who have no self-control.

Furthermore, a lot of disabilities result from poor choices. If someone gets into a crash while hang gliding, we aren't going to say that his resulting paralysis isn't a disability. You can say the same thing about many cases of heart disease and diabetes, many back injuries, and even cancer for cigarette smokers.

Note that the EU case came up in the employment context, not the context of parking spaces. If the person can do the job, why should he or she be fired just because of weight? Under the ADA, if the employer can show a valid work-related basis, it's a different ballgame.


Of course people who really have medical conditions, understand. But vast majority don't, ultimately it just comes down to will power and choice. Losing weight is hard work.
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 19, 2014 8:00 am    Post subject:

Fallout wrote:
Of course people who really have medical conditions, understand. But vast majority don't, ultimately it just comes down to will power and choice. Losing weight is hard work.


Again, a great many disabilities are linked in some way to will power and choice. I find discussions like this to be interesting because they show the level of bias that some folks have against obese people. I really do understand why this is true, but it's still interesting. On the other hand, it amuses me to know that some of the younger people who are making such caustic comments about obese people are going to wind up obese at some point in their lives. I'm guilty of that myself.
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 19, 2014 8:13 am    Post subject:

Aeneas Hunter wrote:
Fallout wrote:
Of course people who really have medical conditions, understand. But vast majority don't, ultimately it just comes down to will power and choice. Losing weight is hard work.


Again, a great many disabilities are linked in some way to will power and choice. I find discussions like this to be interesting because they show the level of bias that some folks have against obese people. I really do understand why this is true, but it's still interesting. On the other hand, it amuses me to know that some of the younger people who are making such caustic comments about obese people are going to wind up obese at some point in their lives. I'm guilty of that myself.


What's interesting is that, when I was in Europe there were very few obese people. Most of the chubs i saw were either Brits on vacation or Americans. Lends to the idea that it's a lifestyle thing.
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 19, 2014 12:04 pm    Post subject:

Aeneas Hunter wrote:

On the other hand, there are some people who have actual medical conditions that cause morbid obesity. I wouldn't lump them in with people who have no self-control.

Then that medical condition is their disability. Obesity isn't the disability it's a symptom of the actual disability.
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 19, 2014 12:50 pm    Post subject:

Grammer wrote:
What's interesting is that, when I was in Europe there were very few obese people. Most of the chubs i saw were either Brits on vacation or Americans. Lends to the idea that it's a lifestyle thing.


You can make a great case that it's due to the American food industry, as opposed to a lifestyle choice. When I went through the process of losing a lot of weight (around 160 lbs.), I really became conscious of the fast food culture in the US. If you want to have a healthy lunch, it is actually HARD to do so in most places. The food industry in the US manipulates us through sugar, fat, and salt. People have been programmed to make bad dietary choices. For example, I often eat lunch at a Luby's Cafeteria near my office. You can get a pretty decent, balanced meal there with two sides of vegetables. But when I go through the line, I am amazed how many people pick mashed potatoes and macaroni & cheese as their "vegetables."

Anyway, I digress. I got involved in this thread just to say that morbid obesity is considered a disability (with some nuances) in the US, just like in Europe.
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 19, 2014 1:56 pm    Post subject:

It always comes back to money. Always.

Quote:
1. Antibiotics in food and as medicine. A recent article in the New York Times confirms suspicions that the antibiotics routinely given to livestock to make them fat do the same thing to people. Antibiotics are thought to fatten by changing gut bacteria to make absorption of nutrients more efficient. In 1974, an experiment was done on several hundred Navy recruits to see if they would gain weight on antibiotics and, after only seven weeks, they did. An experiment was also done, unethically it sounds, on “mentally deficient spastic” children in Guatemala in the 1950s, reports the Times. The children gained an extra five pounds over a year compared with children who were not given antibiotics. Denmark researchers found babies given antibiotics within six months of birth were more likely to be overweight by age seven.

Most researchers blame over-prescription of antibiotics for excessive human exposure; US children get as many as 20 antibiotic treatments while they are growing up, says Martin Blaser, a leading antibiotic researcher at New York University Langone Medical Center. But studies show there are antibiotic residues in US food too, especially in meat and milk, and the government tests for them. That means even if you avoid unnecessary antibiotics from the doctor, you could be getting them from the grocery store.

2. Other livestock fatteners. If antibiotics used to make livestock fat could make us fat, is there any reason to think other weight-producing drugs for livestock wouldn’t do the same?Ractopamine, marketed as Paylean for pigs, Optaflexx for cattle and Topmax for turkeys is widely used in the US and banned in many other countries. It is given to 60 to 80 percent of US pigs, 30 percent of ration-fed cattle and an undisclosed number of turkeys. There is no withdrawal period for ractopamine before slaughter but Big Ag says the drug is not in the meat because it exits the animal as manure. Okay, but what happens to the manure?

Also banned in European countries are the hormones US cattle growers rely upon, such as oestradiol-17, trenbolone acetate, zeranol and melengestrol. Zeranol may have more actions than just making mammals fat. It is a “powerful estrogenic chemical, as demonstrated by its ability to stimulate growth and proliferation of human breast tumor cells in vitro at potencies similar to those of the natural hormone estradiol and the known carcinogen diethylstilbestrol,” says the Breast Cancer Fund. Translation: it may be linked to US breast cancer rates, too. No wonder Europe doesn’t want our beef.

3. Pesticides and other endocrine disrupters. Some antibiotics and artificial sweeteners are similar molecules to endocrine disrupters—the chemicals used to make fire retardants and plastics that are increasingly in our food and environment. Endocrine disrupters, like BPA (Bisphenol A), banned in some baby bottles, and Triclosan found in Colgate’s Total and many dish detergents, are linked to a host of shocking symptoms like genital deformities in wildlife and infertility, low sperm counts and possible early puberty and diabetes in humans. But they also may be linked to obesity.

s early as 2003, the journal Toxicological Sciences addressed effects that endocrine disruptors have on fetal development that likely play a role in adult obesity. “Obesity has been proposed to be yet another adverse health effect of exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) during critical stages of development,” echoes an article in the International Journal of Andrology. Pregnant women with high levels of the endocrine disrupter PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid used in the manufacture of as Teflon and Gore-Tex) in their bodies were three times as likely to have daughters who grew up to be overweight, reported the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof.

4. Sugar substitutes. Artificial sweeteners have always been billed as a way to cut calories and lose weight. But recent research shows they may do just the opposite. When researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center studied 474 people who drank two or more artificially sweetened soft drinks a day they found the people gained five times as much as those not drinking diet drinks. Thanks for nothing!

There are three reasons artificial sweeteners may do more harm than good. One is that some of the sweeteners—which tend to be chemicals like acesulfame potassium and aspartame—may slow metabolism, speculate researchers. Secondly, artificial sweeteners separate “food seeking behavior” from the “reward” of real nutrients and can set up sweets addictions because the reward is never received. They literally “train” people to crave sweets. Finally the presence of artificial sweeteners in a product doesn’t automatically mean natural sweeteners aren’t present too. Some food manufacturers use both. Read the label. Marion Nestle, a professor in nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University and leading food expert, told me she isn’t aware of any convincing evidence that proves artificial sweeteners help people to lose weight. One artificial sweetener, Splenda, has similarities to endocrine disrupting pesticides….

5. Industry and government marketing. Most people are aware of aggressive junk food marketing, especially to children, and everyone from Disneyland to First Lady Michelle Obama has spoken out about it. In a study in the journal Pediatrics, children who tasted identical graham crackers and gummy fruit snacks, some with and some without cartoon characters, “significantly preferred the taste of foods that had popular cartoon characters on the packaging.” Who says advertising doesn’t work?

Researchers who studied 500,000 California middle- and high-school students found those who attended schools located near fast-food outlets—surprise!—weighed more. Still, it is not just the food industry that is responsible for our growing national girth.

The USDA, even though it cautions food consumers about high-fat, obesity-linked foods, plays the other side of the street as well and is linked to a group that seeks to get people to double their cheese intake to help milk sales. Dairy Management, a USDA “marketing creation” with 162 employees, according to the New York Times, has helped Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Burger King, Wendy’s and Domino’s cheesify their menu options!

“If every pizza included one more ounce of cheese, we would sell an additional 250 million pounds of cheese annually,” rhapsodized the Dairy Management chief executive in a trade publication. Though Dairy Management is mostly funded by farmers, it received $5.3 million from the USDA during one year, for an overseas dairy campaign, which almost equals the total $6.5 million budget of USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion—the group that cautions us about fatty foods like cheese. Yes, the government is talking out of both sides of its mouth when it tells the public what to put in its mouth.


http://www.salon.com/2014/03/13/5_shocking_reasons_why_americans_are_getting_fatter_partner/
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 19, 2014 3:58 pm    Post subject:

^^^^

On the last point, I read an interesting piece from a British nutritionist ripping the Department of Agriculture and blaming Britain for following its lead. She argued that the food industry was co-opting the Department and getting it to push the industry's agenda. The example I remember was the idea that people need to eat more fruit
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 19, 2014 5:03 pm    Post subject:

I thought I noticed more handicap spots while driving by my old school.
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 19, 2014 5:41 pm    Post subject:

No. 17 wrote:
It always comes back to money. Always.

Quote:
1. Antibiotics in food and as medicine. A recent article in the New York Times confirms suspicions that the antibiotics routinely given to livestock to make them fat do the same thing to people. Antibiotics are thought to fatten by changing gut bacteria to make absorption of nutrients more efficient. In 1974, an experiment was done on several hundred Navy recruits to see if they would gain weight on antibiotics and, after only seven weeks, they did. An experiment was also done, unethically it sounds, on “mentally deficient spastic” children in Guatemala in the 1950s, reports the Times. The children gained an extra five pounds over a year compared with children who were not given antibiotics. Denmark researchers found babies given antibiotics within six months of birth were more likely to be overweight by age seven.

Most researchers blame over-prescription of antibiotics for excessive human exposure; US children get as many as 20 antibiotic treatments while they are growing up, says Martin Blaser, a leading antibiotic researcher at New York University Langone Medical Center. But studies show there are antibiotic residues in US food too, especially in meat and milk, and the government tests for them. That means even if you avoid unnecessary antibiotics from the doctor, you could be getting them from the grocery store.

2. Other livestock fatteners. If antibiotics used to make livestock fat could make us fat, is there any reason to think other weight-producing drugs for livestock wouldn’t do the same?Ractopamine, marketed as Paylean for pigs, Optaflexx for cattle and Topmax for turkeys is widely used in the US and banned in many other countries. It is given to 60 to 80 percent of US pigs, 30 percent of ration-fed cattle and an undisclosed number of turkeys. There is no withdrawal period for ractopamine before slaughter but Big Ag says the drug is not in the meat because it exits the animal as manure. Okay, but what happens to the manure?

Also banned in European countries are the hormones US cattle growers rely upon, such as oestradiol-17, trenbolone acetate, zeranol and melengestrol. Zeranol may have more actions than just making mammals fat. It is a “powerful estrogenic chemical, as demonstrated by its ability to stimulate growth and proliferation of human breast tumor cells in vitro at potencies similar to those of the natural hormone estradiol and the known carcinogen diethylstilbestrol,” says the Breast Cancer Fund. Translation: it may be linked to US breast cancer rates, too. No wonder Europe doesn’t want our beef.

3. Pesticides and other endocrine disrupters. Some antibiotics and artificial sweeteners are similar molecules to endocrine disrupters—the chemicals used to make fire retardants and plastics that are increasingly in our food and environment. Endocrine disrupters, like BPA (Bisphenol A), banned in some baby bottles, and Triclosan found in Colgate’s Total and many dish detergents, are linked to a host of shocking symptoms like genital deformities in wildlife and infertility, low sperm counts and possible early puberty and diabetes in humans. But they also may be linked to obesity.

s early as 2003, the journal Toxicological Sciences addressed effects that endocrine disruptors have on fetal development that likely play a role in adult obesity. “Obesity has been proposed to be yet another adverse health effect of exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) during critical stages of development,” echoes an article in the International Journal of Andrology. Pregnant women with high levels of the endocrine disrupter PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid used in the manufacture of as Teflon and Gore-Tex) in their bodies were three times as likely to have daughters who grew up to be overweight, reported the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof.

4. Sugar substitutes. Artificial sweeteners have always been billed as a way to cut calories and lose weight. But recent research shows they may do just the opposite. When researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center studied 474 people who drank two or more artificially sweetened soft drinks a day they found the people gained five times as much as those not drinking diet drinks. Thanks for nothing!

There are three reasons artificial sweeteners may do more harm than good. One is that some of the sweeteners—which tend to be chemicals like acesulfame potassium and aspartame—may slow metabolism, speculate researchers. Secondly, artificial sweeteners separate “food seeking behavior” from the “reward” of real nutrients and can set up sweets addictions because the reward is never received. They literally “train” people to crave sweets. Finally the presence of artificial sweeteners in a product doesn’t automatically mean natural sweeteners aren’t present too. Some food manufacturers use both. Read the label. Marion Nestle, a professor in nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University and leading food expert, told me she isn’t aware of any convincing evidence that proves artificial sweeteners help people to lose weight. One artificial sweetener, Splenda, has similarities to endocrine disrupting pesticides….

5. Industry and government marketing. Most people are aware of aggressive junk food marketing, especially to children, and everyone from Disneyland to First Lady Michelle Obama has spoken out about it. In a study in the journal Pediatrics, children who tasted identical graham crackers and gummy fruit snacks, some with and some without cartoon characters, “significantly preferred the taste of foods that had popular cartoon characters on the packaging.” Who says advertising doesn’t work?

Researchers who studied 500,000 California middle- and high-school students found those who attended schools located near fast-food outlets—surprise!—weighed more. Still, it is not just the food industry that is responsible for our growing national girth.

The USDA, even though it cautions food consumers about high-fat, obesity-linked foods, plays the other side of the street as well and is linked to a group that seeks to get people to double their cheese intake to help milk sales. Dairy Management, a USDA “marketing creation” with 162 employees, according to the New York Times, has helped Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Burger King, Wendy’s and Domino’s cheesify their menu options!

“If every pizza included one more ounce of cheese, we would sell an additional 250 million pounds of cheese annually,” rhapsodized the Dairy Management chief executive in a trade publication. Though Dairy Management is mostly funded by farmers, it received $5.3 million from the USDA during one year, for an overseas dairy campaign, which almost equals the total $6.5 million budget of USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion—the group that cautions us about fatty foods like cheese. Yes, the government is talking out of both sides of its mouth when it tells the public what to put in its mouth.


http://www.salon.com/2014/03/13/5_shocking_reasons_why_americans_are_getting_fatter_partner/


That's fine and good and all but I'd wager that portion control is the single biggest culprit with anything else being a distant second. You can bring over those European food products and if you're still eating 16 ounce steaks with a side of potato/sour cream and "salad" and wash it down with a 32 oz slurpee, you'll get fat. 1-4 might contribute around the edges but it's completely ignoring the obvious. There's a legion of Americans that are fit despite those things because they watch what they eat and they exercise. Parents send their kids to school with a breakfast of Frosted Flakes, a lunch bag with sandwhich, chips and a "dessert", swing by Mickey D's for a Mcnugget meal for dinner. I went to Mickey D's for the first time in ages and apparently meals are served with bigger sized fries now. The "regular" fries when I grew up is now called small, and regular fries is the original large in the red container. Large is now the super-sized containers. Gotta be the anti-biotics why Junior is a fat (bleep).
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 5:15 am    Post subject:

Lakers_2000 wrote:
Absolutely ridiculous. You get fat one Twinkie at a time. It's a choice, not a disability.


I don't think it's that simple. Food is very addicting when you get into the bad habit of eating too much of it, especially with all the tasty junk food available these days. From age 10-16 I was much heavier than other kids my age and that made my life more difficult. I didn't choose to be fat. By age 15 I was sick of it but it was really hard to get started when I never lost much weight before, and I didn't believe in myself then.

Losing weight probably came easier for me than most people. I know some people who are very impatient and I seriously doubt they can go on a serious diet that will last long enough for them to lose much of the weight. These people just keep getting bigger as they get older. If you think you'll never lose the weight, then it's even harder to find the motivation to actually do it.

With hindsight, it might have actually helped me in the long run that I was overweight at such a young age. A large percentage of teens are thin so I stood out as a fat guy and that made me hate being fat even more. A couple of the people who teased me for being fat are in their early 30's and they are really heavy. Even by age 25 they were clearly obese and these people were much thinner when they were younger. One of them was a guy who was always skinny. I was shocked when I saw what he looked like in his mid-20's. I could tease him for being the fat one today if I wanted to.
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