by Cynserity Stevens

Created on: April 01, 2009

Is obesity a disease or a choice? Those are my only two options? I don't get a both or a neither alternative? Okay then, my answer is that obesity is a disease cause by choices we all make as individuals.

Like how I did that? Now let me explain it for you.

Overweight and obesity are both labels for ranges of weight that are greater than what is generally considered healthy for a given height. That is the medical definition anyway but I disagree with it. Your BMI (body mass index) doesn't take into consideration how much of your total weight is comprised of dense muscle tissue as opposed to body fat. Your BMI also doesn't account for bone structure. Yes, some people really are just big boned.

I think obesity needs a better definition.

Basically if you are fat you know it. It is no secret to you. Some people (usually the skinny ones) have a distorted picture of themselves and they swear they are fat disgusting pigs when they are 5'7" and 120 pounds. I am talking about the people who are 5'7" and are 220 pounds.

How did so many people the world over get so fat that obesity is now listed on the CDC website and is considered an epidemic?

The choices they made and are probably still making today.

No one wakes up one day weighing an extra ten pounds. But everyone notices when they put on an extra ten pounds. Ten pounds might not be enough to make you have to go out and buy a whole new wardrobe but you still feel the difference when you get dressed. That should be the first sign. That should be the warning to people that if they don't change their lifestyle that ten pounds is going to turn into twenty, then thirty, then forty and so on. Notice I said change their lifestyle, not go on a diet. Anyone can lose ten pounds on a diet. A few weeks of reaching for an apple for breakfast instead of a mammoth apple cinnamon muffin, having a side salad with fat free dressing instead of a breaded chicken BLT salad that comes served in a bread bowl with full fat ranch dressing for lunch, and eating a bowl of shredded wheat (just to stay regular) for dinner will shed those ten pounds easily.

But what happens when you go back to your old eating habits? Sooner or later you are back on the diet because now instead of ten pounds, you gained twenty. And since twenty pounds are harder to lose you give up on the diet and before you know it you went from a size 12 to a size 24W.

This is usually where people interject that their Great Aunt Shirley on their fathers side had (pick metabolic condition

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