When someone who you care about dies of obesity related complications

siberiantarragon

One of my friends died yesterday of cardiac arrest caused by obesity. He had existing health issues related to obesity, so while it is shocking, it was not entirely unexpected. I had worried about him for years prior to this. His life was shortened by 20 to 30 years.

It just makes me really angry to see how obesity is normalized in society and talking about it as an adverse health condition is now seen as "shaming." This is something I've been angry about for quite some time, especially during COVID when sitting at home eating DoorDash, drinking, and not working out was reframed as a healthy behavior. Especially ironic because obesity is one of the main risk factors from dying of COVID. I read in a study that the average American gained 30 pounds during COVID. There are almost 3x more overweight people than non-overweight people in the U.S.

Normalization of obesity is stealing valuable years from peoples' lives. We probably all know someone or multiple people who have died as a result of obesity. My friend wasn't even the first person I knew who fell into that category. I still can't believe he is gone forever. I knew him for 10 years and he was an integral part of the community I am part of.

When are we going to take the obesity crisis seriously? When is it going to turn around? Will it ever? How many more people have to die?

summerviking1

I am sorry for your loss. I hope this does ot sound rude but I think obesity is ony really normalized in the USA and maybe a little in the UK and Austarlia. I am not sure it will be taken seriously in the USA until people think telling the truth is not bullying.

mrmota70

Condolences on loss of your friend. (This is abbreviated and a generalized opinion/view.. An encyclopedia could be written... but here is the way I look at it) The fact is we can do our part for ourselves and then we can have our opinion/advice for family and friends. Until someone decides and is truly ready to do it for themselves we cannot force them however well our intentions are. On a whole society is where we are because we make our choices bad or good. We can lay blame on our upbringing, society, poor/cheap choices of food availability, but it is for us as individuals to come to the realization. Financial position plays a big part in it as well. It is a lot easier to to feed on the cheap a family than being healthy and eating things like fresh fruits, less of everything and other things we know are detrimental to ourselves and others. Yes they're is a percentage that is based on psychological issues. In that case its not just offering up advice, but it is for an individual to get that professional help that'll eventually allow them to slowly be in a better place and take control of their poor choices. There have been steps taken to people being informed, but it is pretty safe to say the vast majority of folks don't look at the nutritional info. that most things are sold with. With the world available in our pockets these days most forgo using that ability to better themselves and they end up just entertaining themselves while they unfortunately are harming themselves with poor choices and not just getting up and go for a walk a few times a week.

nsk1951

Sorry for the loss of your friend. This same thing happened to a family member and was the catalyst for me to work on my own over-weight issues. I miss him every day and his kids ended up growing up without a dad. His wife ended up losing their home to foreclosure. I will never stop missing him. I will never stop working on my weight issues.

siberiantarragon

summerviking1 wrote: »

I am sorry for your loss. I hope this does ot sound rude but I think obesity is ony really normalized in the USA and maybe a little in the UK and Austarlia. I am not sure it will be taken seriously in the USA until people think telling the truth is not bullying.

I'd say it's normalized in all the English speaking countries and many other countries around the world such as most of the Latin countries, Middle East, India, Pacific Islands, etc. I'm saying this based on either people I know from those countries or news reports I've seen about obesity in those countries. I agree with you about telling the truth since East Asian countries (China, Japan, Korea) have a culture where people are very blunt about telling people when they need to lose weight, and their obesity rates are at 3 to 4% vs. the 25 to 42% rate in English-speaking countries, even though they have the same economic access to food as we do and they certainly have plenty of junk food as well. This seems anathema to us since we are taught so much about body positivity and how "fat shaming" people (which now encompasses a wide range of behaviors, even a doctor telling someone they need to lose weight is considered to be fat shaming) doesn't help. And yet, you can't argue with results, right?

mrmota70 wrote: »

Condolences on loss of your friend. (This is abbreviated and a generalized opinion/view.. An encyclopedia could be written... but here is the way I look at it) The fact is we can do our part for ourselves and then we can have our opinion/advice for family and friends. Until someone decides and is truly ready to do it for themselves we cannot force them however well our intentions are. On a whole society is where we are because we make our choices bad or good. We can lay blame on our upbringing, society, poor/cheap choices of food availability, but it is for us as individuals to come to the realization. Financial position plays a big part in it as well. It is a lot easier to to feed on the cheap a family than being healthy and eating things like fresh fruits, less of everything and other things we know are detrimental to ourselves and others. Yes they're is a percentage that is based on psychological issues. In that case its not just offering up advice, but it is for an individual to get that professional help that'll eventually allow them to slowly be in a better place and take control of their poor choices. There have been steps taken to people being informed, but it is pretty safe to say the vast majority of folks don't look at the nutritional info. that most things are sold with. With the world available in our pockets these days most forgo using that ability to better themselves and they end up just entertaining themselves while they unfortunately are harming themselves with poor choices and not just getting up and go for a walk a few times a week.

The thing is a lot of people don't see it as a problem because of how normalized it is. Even at the memorial yesterday one of my friends said, "I know he was overweight, but most people are these days, so I don't understand how he died from it." I think being obese should be treated as serious of a health problem as having an alcohol or drug addiction. If you even suggest that though, people will get mad at you and accuse you of being "fatphobic," which just shows how entrenched it is in our culture. Even the government treats it as "less than ideal but what are you going to do, right?"

I think financial position has been overplayed in terms of determining the cause of obesity. I'd even go as far to say that people use it as an excuse to avoid taking responsibility for their own health, because

a) Even if you have to live off unhealthy foods, that doesn't mean you have to overeat. There have been some periods of time in my life where I lived off fast food due to depression. I didn't gain any weight because I made sure to only eat ~2000 calories of fast food per day. Now of course that's probably not healthy for other reasons but it's not the cause of obesity.

b) Unhealthy foods are actually pretty expensive. Whenever I go to Wendy's it's over $10 for a meal. Or if I buy a frozen meal it's like $5 or more and it's not even enough for an entire meal and I have to add other things. Whereas I could feed a huge family for under $10 with whole-wheat pasta and sauce, or brown rice and lentils and frozen vegetables, etc. And none of those things are hard to prepare, you basically just boil stuff and then add seasonings. Same with any kind of roasted vegetables, you basically just season it, put it in the oven and then go about your business until it's ready. Even if you can't cook, Ready Rice or Ready Pasta, canned beans, and frozen vegetables is less than half the cost of a fast food meal.

c) Overeating costs way more money than eating a normal amount. These food prices are so ridiculous and I only eat 2000 calories a day and don't eat that much meat, I have no idea how the average American who's eating 3600 calories a day with a meat-heavy diet is affording all this.

However that being said in the case of my friend, finances were not an issue.

I'm not sure exactly why obesity has become so normalized in the first place but without getting too political it seems there was a general societal breakdown over time, where maybe kids weren't cared for as much due to increased work hours, latchkey kids, the increased divorce rate, etc. And I think our obesity crisis and mental health crisis come as a result of that.

nsk1951 wrote: »

Sorry for the loss of your friend. This same thing happened to a family member and was the catalyst for me to work on my own over-weight issues. I miss him every day and his kids ended up growing up without a dad. His wife ended up losing their home to foreclosure. I will never stop missing him. I will never stop working on my weight issues.

I'm glad you were able to use his passing as a catalyst to prolong your own life and my condolences for your loss. There are other people in our friends circle who have similar weight caused health issues and I've worried about them over the years. I hope that his death will be a wake up call to them too. I don't want to see any more of my friends die prematurely of a preventable cause. That's really a big reason why I wrote this post because all of it just makes me angry, that his life was taken from him and that the same could happen to other people I care about and I'm not sure what to do about it.