It’s a Mad, Mad World
According to a study published in the February 28 edition of the Archives of Internal Medicine researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina and Imperial College London found getting an honest assessment from a physician appeared to be a key factor in whether or not study participants considered themselves overweight. The authors concluded; “Among patients who were overweight or obese, patient reports of being told by a physician that they were overweight were associated with more realistic perceptions of the patients’ own weight, desire to lose weight, and recent attempts to lose weight.”
Now Diabetic Investor does not want to make light of this ground breaking study but we’re curious if these over-weight and obese patients owned either a scale or mirror. Did they actually need their physician to confirm what should be painfully obvious? It’s not as if these patients were unaware of their weight situation or that controlling their weight can vastly improve their overall health. Frankly you can’t swing a dead cat today without seeing a TV commercial, print or web ad for the hundreds, more realistically thousands, of products or services that help people lose weight.
Since the study did not mention whether or not these patients actually stepped on a scale or looked in a mirror we can only assume that besides being over-weight and/or obese these patients were extraordinarily stupid as well. We can further assume that this group of mentally challenged patients likely believed it’s ok to eat multiple bags of Doritos, have a diet that consists mainly of McDonald’s and Domino’s Pizza and that their daily exercise consisted primarily of using their TV remote control because they were too lazy to get up off the couch.
Reading through this study the authors seem to believe that it’s important for the physician to acknowledge publicly that their patient is fat as it will help the patient gain a realistic perception and will actually prompt the patient to try and lose weight. The study does not mention what these physicians were doing before they had this heart to heart chat with their patients or when exactly this honest discussion should take place. Should they wait until the patient cannot make it through their office door or perhaps when the patient is so fat they can’t get up on the examination table?
Although Diabetic Investor has not conducted an actual study on the subject an observational analysis tells us that physicians across the country have their work cut out for them. Although this may shock researchers it does not take an advanced degree to know that there are far too many over-weight and obese people in this world. It also does not take advanced degree to know that many of these people could care less about their weight in the first place otherwise they would have never gotten so fat in the first place.
Yes we know there are many who see obesity as another disease state believing that it’s not the patients fault for getting so fat. That the patient isn’t to blame for the food choices they make or the fact they can’t even attempt a modicum of exercise. They see these people as victims who are unable to control their behavior and need advanced help to deal with their disease. The situation has become so ludicrous that we can’t even use the word fat to describe what now is called an obese person.
The simple fact is the world has gone completely mad and forgotten about a simple, yet proven fact – as hard as these researchers try and prove otherwise there is something called personal responsibility. Although there may be some obese patients who cannot control themselves, the vast majority of obese people are in large part responsible for their situation by the choices they have made.
Diabetic Investor does not want to be insensitive here, however we cannot sit ideally by and let these obese patients off the hook by creating the impression they are not fat until their physician tells them their fat. We’re not sure when the concept of personal responsibility became a subject that could not be discussed but we do know that this view that people are not held accountable for their actions has made a bad situation even worse.
Although it’s unlikely in our overly PC world, it’s about time someone held this people accountable for their actions, tell them the reasons they are fat is not because they have a disease rather because they aren’t eating right and do not exercise. Tell them honestly that should they continue to follow this path they will have no one but themselves to blame for all the co-morbidities associated with obesity. As Pope John Paul II once said; “Each individual in fact has moral responsibility for the acts which he personally performs; no one can be exempted from this responsibility, and on the basis of it everyone will be judged by God Himself.”
