There is a difference but im saying the venn diagram of "people facing death threats to support gay marriage" and "people offended by a bikini" are two separate circles.

No one cares what you say.

Hows about a little less politarding, a little more fattie talk.

It looks like that stomach suction device only drains 30% of the calories eaten. They may need to get it up to 65-70% to make a real dent.

Yeah, seems like a lot of trouble to go thru for only 30%. When it makes lapband and stomach stapling surgery look normal, you know it's really out there.

30% is huge, if you can manage to keep the same eating habits.

That said, nobody in their right mind should consider the device anyway.

I don't care how bad your genes are if you are seriously obese I don't know how you didn't get to a point where you looked at yourself and said "this is unhealthy I am going to stop eating so much"

A lot of fat people try to lose weight all the time, they just never succeed, not for long anyway. After a while they just convince themselves that it's not possible.

There's a lot of ignorance, delusion and possibly mental health problems involved imo

Alcoholics shouldn't kill themselves with alcohol either, but they still do.

I can't tell you how many times I've thought or said this. Mental disabilities imo.

thought that about other people or thought that about yourself when looking in the mirror?

More than once, I've heard about a study involving anorexics, where they were shown pictures of themselves and pictures of other anorexics. In sum, they didn't see anything wrong with their own bodies, but they took others to task for being too thin and sickly looking. Makes me wonder if obese people think the same?

And also, the progression to bigger is so slow that, looking in the mirror, you probably won't say "holy cow." It's not like there is a huge contrast overnight, which I suppose would be jarring.

But with that said, I'm sure many people who are overweight are well aware of it. No doubt we've all heard a million conversations about someone saying they had to start working out or whatever to get to their comfortable weight.

It is obviously some form of mental instability the reliance on food for comfort or something? But bad genes play a huge role as well as upbringing I suppose, I mean if you come from a large family of overweight people then you probably just think its normal.

Thought it about others.

this american life did a podcast about fat people recently

fairly biased as their podcasts tend to be

Precious, smug and biased are their specialties. American life my ass, they don't deserve to call themselves American if you ask me.

i guess thats why no one did.

The end goal should be to come up with whatever strategy works best for encourage fatties to recognize their problems (be they simply overeating or a mental illness masked with overeating) and helping take steps to correct it.

Mocking them, calling them names, harassing them, the "tough love" approach most likely isn't best.

But telling them they are perfect and wonderful and should be proud of themselves just the way they are and nothing is their fault, etc. that's even worse IMO.

You can also leave them alone and let them make their own decisions

And what happens when they eat their own decisions, cause they eat everything.

Interesting approach!

However obesity is a public health issue not just a personal one. We could stop nagging smokers about quitting also I suppose, but generally society is better off when we don't pay billions to treat self-inflicted health problems.

As an ex-smoker, I can assure you that nagging smokers to quit is highly ineffective. In fact, it makes them less likely to quit, having the opposite effect you want, in my experience.

I can't imagine how nagging fatties would be any different.

When I say nagging I am talking about public health awareness campaigns such as the very graphic (and undeniably effective) commercials that show what smoking does to your body.

Imagine a similar program that showed the end result of obesity... amputated limbs, stroke, heart attack, death. My feeling is that a series of graphic commercials like that, similar to the anti-smoking campaigns, would never be allowed, as they would be labeled as prejudiced or hateful towards fat people.

And?

The CDC claims those ads caused a whopping 200,000 people to quit, half of who relapsed, so 100,000 people quit. I also would have to question how many of those smokers turned to vaping, which became popular and more effective during the time the CDC is taking credit for.

Smokers got lucky in getting an easy out. I'm not sure what the similar alternatives are for the chronically overweight.

but how many people did it prevent from ever turning to smoking?