Why is obesity a disease? Why is it not? Is it really a personal choice? A personal choice that has led it to be a disease. On this episode of The New Helix Experience podcast, Tim Frey shares about Obesity: Disease Or Personal Choice?
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Hey guys, thanks for checking out this episode today. I’m talking about obesity. Is it a disease or a personal choice and trigger warning here guys.
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All this information and content and personal views are my own. If you do not like them, do not listen to this episode or unsubscribe. And I say that about all my **** as well on Instagram.
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YouTube wherever the **** you listen to me or watch me if you don’t like what I’m on about.
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Unsubscribe and don’t leave your probably unwanted opinion anyway.
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So today I’m going to be talking about what is obesity? I’m going to be going into like the potential causes of obesity, genetic effects, environmental behaviour, that kind of thing. Then I’m going to give some effective strategies around combating it. And then I’m going to go through. Is it a personal choice or disease? And give you my unsolicited opinion on that so?
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What is obesity?
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It’s generally classes and medical conditions where the person has excess body fat which is accumulated to the extent that it causes adverse health conditions. Pretty ******* bad shift here. Obesity is generally defined as having like a high BMI of 30 or over, which is pretty.
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It’s a measure based on a body fat, height and weight and used to classify a normal.
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Overweight or obese?
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I’m going to go through classification, so class one is of obesity. Is 3035 Class 235 to 40 and Class 3 is a BMI of 40 or higher, so it’s important to note that BMI is not.
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Any perfect measure of body fat and it does not take into account factors such as muscle mass, bone density and fat distribution.
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Just note that on a BMI scale I am obese. If you’ve ever seen me and you look at me, you probably don’t think I’m obese or fat, but it’s because I have like a high degree of muscle mass in a very concentrated short body.
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But I’m not fat and I probably would know there are a lot of fat people out there would use that as an excuse to say they’re big boned or muscly.
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Nope, you’re just fat. That’s all that is.
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So it is possible for someone with a high BMI to be fit and healthy and someone with a low BMI to be unhealthy. Health is such a subjective thing these days so.
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You know at the bottom of your heart looking at someone, you can probably tell if they’re healthy or not, unless you’ve lived under a ******* rock for a.
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Very long time.
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I swear in this because I’m quite passionate about it and a lot of people ask me like you probably thinking there.
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Even yourself like, why are you even qualified?
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To talk about this.
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Well, I have two degrees in exercise science.
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I know alone. That doesn’t mean much. I’ve coached over 3000 people over the last 13 years, and I’m probably one of the most passionate strength, fitness and health researchers there is on. Like a personal level.
00:02:39 Speaker 1
I’m definitely qualified to talk about this and I have vast experience dealing with obese people, so I want to go through the potential causes of obesity.
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Which are genetic, environmental and behaviour so behavioural so far?
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Actually it is. You know, commonly known or discussed in the scientific community that obesity is a genetic thing or it has some degree of genetics, quote unquote to it, and the statement I hear I have here is obesity tends to run in families.
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And what I say.
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Is no one runs in your family.
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And what I mean by that is I think it is such a habits and behavioural thing which is passed down from overweight or obese people rather than it’s genetic. You’re bound to be fat because I’m fat thing. It’s also just comes down to like a laziness thing.
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Generally, if you have lazy parents, they’re going to pass down their ****** and lazy habits to you, and whether you agree with me or not, that’s the ******* truth. I’ve seen this time and time again.
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The second thing here is environmental factors. Some environments have a higher abundance of high calorie foods and low nutrient foods. So if we talk about a place like America, which is highly publicised for having a lot of high calorie foods very cheaply.
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And we compare that to a place like. I’m going to say Nairobi or Somalia or somewhere in Africa where they don’t have much food.
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And the food they do have can potentially be high calorie depending on what it is, but they just don’t have access to the same amount of foods that Americans do, and the Americans have a lot easier way to get it.
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3rd factor here is behavioural factors, so you know a bad diet can lead to less physical activity activity because you just feel like ****.
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So people who eat **** generally feel like ****. Therefore, if you feel like ****, you’re not gonna do much activity. Therefore you’re gonna gain weight and it’s just an absolute ship cycle.
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The fourth thing here is a medical condition, so you could have something like hypothyroidism or crushing syndrome which can cause weight gain or obesity.
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A lot of people do use this as a cop out. They’ll they’ll say, yeah, yeah, you know overweight or obese because I have XI think a lot of the times that is a cop out. Unless you have something like.
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Described by a doctor and saying This is why you are obese. I do not buy it. The next thing here is we have medication so some antipsychotics or antidepressants can cause weight gain and side effects of which no they can cause weight gain as a side effect.
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But a lot of the times.
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People using these types of drugs get to that point because they are obese.
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So it’s kind of like the chicken or the egg scenarios. If you weren’t unhealthy and you weren’t lazy and you were exercising and eating well.
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Would you need the drugs that the doctor is putting on? Probably not, and my 6 point here is.
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Psychological factors like stress, emotional eating and other other factors can contribute to weight gain.
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My personal anecdote on this, or personal opinion on this, is that something generally happens in someone’s life when they are quite young.
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Whether that is passed down from family or they have had bad should happen to them and it causes them to have a bad relationship with food. Whether that’s like a a coping messing.
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Mechanism of trauma that’s happened or it’s just bad habits passed down from family. But this always starts out in the kid.
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Then they get into a habit or a cycle of not training and eating ****, and then it just like spirals downward. You get into your 20s and you.
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You know you can barely do any exercise. Can’t go for a walk without puffing out. Don’t play much sport because you’re not good at it. Quote unquote because you’ve been obese as a kid and then it just spirals into this.
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Factor of.
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Just being obese and overweight overtime.
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And I know as I’m saying this, some people are probably like you’ve got this all wrong. But honestly from my life and and coaching like over 3000 people and hearing everyone’s story an excuse, that’s pretty much what has happened. So we’re going to talk about interventions here.
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Effective in white and loss and when I was researching this, there were some which I just completely ******* disagree with and I’ll go through them, but it’s just.
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Honestly, like you know, political ******** obviously cause I am in this area and I do see this and I do see what happens when this happens. And when I say it.
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You’ll be like, yeah, that’s ******* cackle. That’s good. So first one is diet nutrition which you know. Funny story here is when I first got with my.
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Wife she would.
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OK, you know so these things going wrong in my life or with my body. What do you think it is? And I’d say diet exercise and she was like you’re ******* you’re a quack.
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And the more and more time went on, I would just say, like most of the root of her problems are from lack of diet, lack of stretching, lack of movement.
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Or having a poor diet eating the wrong things that don’t agree with your body which cause inflammation and sickness, illness, disease.
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Those types of things and I would say a lot of things that are going wrong with people are from a poor diet. Lack of educational diet.
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Not doing enough training or the right types of training. And as I talk about training, physical activity is honestly like one of the most important things when controlling weight or obesity or anything.
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A lot of the same people that are suffering in these BMI categories just don’t do enough activity at all.
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And like 30 minutes of walking is a good start. You can lose weight and fat on walking. It doesn’t have to be training in a crazy gym like mine.
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You can just go for a walk every day, not eat like a ******* idiot. And then you’re gonna be well on your way.
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But you know, jogging, cycling, swimming, anything that you do in terms of physical activity is gonna be good.
00:08:53 Speaker 1
Next up we’ve got behavioural changes, so we’re talking about therapies, cognitive based training, mindfulness interventions, any type of quote, unquote therapy, as I did mention before, I do think a lot of this is from childhood trauma.
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And things that have been passed down overtime, like bad habits, etc. So you know an effective psychological approach can be warranted.
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I know a lot of people that are obese, overweight to seek some kind of NLP or coaching. For this, I do think that’s a great thing as you know.
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Meeting the issue at the root cause is always gonna be a good thing, but once someone is ingrained in their patterns over so many years, it’s gonna be really hard to undo this.
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Things Next up, you know when I was researching, they said medication.
00:09:43 Speaker 1
I completely disagree with medication for fat loss in terms of controlling obesity and we’re talking about those stimulants which hype up your heart rate. Make really heart make you really sweaty, make your metabolism work faster.
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I think that’s a bit of a cheat code, and obviously we’re putting medication into a natural body like ours, which is.
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I can see them being some consequential long term effects of this and then the last one I completely disagree with is biometric surgery like a gastric bypass or gastric banding or something like that.
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I’ve probably coached about 50 people in my life with this gastric bypass or banding, and I haven’t met a single one that hasn’t.
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Regretted it.
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So if you’re someone that’s thinking about that.
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Speak to other people that have had it and speak to a wide variety of people. Don’t just have your like. You know some of 1. Don’t just speak to one person and then just say, yeah, cook.
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They had a good experience with it. Do it. But honestly, every single.
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Person has.
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That has had this that.
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I have spoken to has regretted that my mother in law has it and she regrets it. We go out to dinner. She can eat like 3 mouthful.
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Is full can’t really participate socially and it only works for a little bit as well, so it hasn’t worked to get her the result of like the magical 506070 kilo fat loss it’s.
00:10:58 Speaker 1
It’s something that needs to be combated with diet exercise, and I would say most certainly like a psychological component to it.
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So for me.
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Is obesity a disease or a choice? I think it’s a choice and I know a lot of people will not agree with that at all. But from my life and my experiences.
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It’s a choice. You have a choice. You can go for a walk every day. You can choose to eat better. You can choose to educate yourself on.
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What to eat? How to eat. How to train.
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Everyone has the disposable.
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Education around them and knowledge that they need to have a better life and I feel like having a better life at big part of that is having a body that you’re proud of and having a body that you can use in a variety of situations so everyone has the ability to choose their path.
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You can choose yours. Are you going to be a beast or are you going?
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To have a healthy life.
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