I wonder how these people explain that most of the overweight people are in the middle class, or how most of the US is middle class in general. Maybe the rich are getting richer, but that doesn't mean the poor are getting poorer. I think one of the biggest actual reasons for our overweight excess is high fructose corn syrup. America consumes over a billion sodas a day, perhaps that has something to do with it. Maybe if we were poorer we couldn't afford so much soda and we'd be thinner.

Yes, the left uses it to prove some odd point about how the poor are oppressed--even though the poorer you are, the fatter you are, as a general rule here in America--while the right uses it to suggest that America is lazy and undisciplined because it's fallen away from traditional values and has become sinful.

It's all nonsense.

Although... I did rather enjoy that the producers of "Triplettes of Belleville" made all Americans obese, including the Statue of Liberty. You have to admit, that's some pretty funny satire.

Well, I don't think Dean is saying our increased obesity isn't a problem, I certainly think it is a problem. However, if we want to deal with it we have to be realistic about the causes and what we can do about it.

Obesity is a national health crisis. It's not only a massive health problem but it also ruins the quality of life for tens of millions of people. Women get it worse of all but men suffer quite enough thanks.

The problem is that we consistently refuse to deal with it like what it is: a severe medical problem, a disease. And not in the "I can't help it I have a disease" mode of trendy victimology, but in the genuine mode of a disease that needs aggressive intervention just like asthma, epilepsy, and so on.

Obesity appears to be caused mostly (mostly, not entirely) by excessively easy access to high quality calorie-dense foods and sedentary lifestyles. However, a sedentary lifestyle is not "laziness" and easy access to calorie-dense foods is not "undisciplined." People in past generations had no choice but to work hard, gruelling physical labor jobs--jobs which, by the way, frequently destroyed their bodies and left them in chronic pain until they died, and most of them would have killed to get jobs where they didn't have to work so hard physically. And most people didn't get fat because most people were at least a little hungry a all the time--food was a lot more expensive and had to be rationed more carefully.

What we face today is a result of neither laziness nor sinfulness but the fact that life is so much better now.

And the great problem is that evolutionarily we are simply not designed to not have to work our tails off physically all day every day, and to not be at least a little hungry most of the time.

In short, it is normal to enjoy eating and to not work harder than necessary. It has nothing whatever to do with discipline, nor with greed or selfishness.

But therein lies the catch, for if you look at any of the literature on obesity research--not the popular books, but the actual research--you'll find the same thing: once you tip the scales past overweight and into obesity, it is much much harder to lose it and, unfortunately, if you do it poorly--and most people do it poorly--you wind up fatter than ever. A whole lot of fat people are killing themselves by making themselves fatter, thinking they can take it off, allow themselves to relax and gain a little back, then take it off again, and it's death.

If you are obese, Susan Powter is lying to you. Dean Ornish is lying to you. Robert Atkins lied to you. Anyone who tells you they know the answer and that if you just use THEIR program and do it right you'll be fine is LYING to you. These programs can help you avoid gaining a lot more weight if you stick to them, and they can help prevent the onset of serious obesity. Once you become truly obese, however, your long-term odds of success at becoming normal-weight, even with radical lifestyle changes, are vanishingly small.

No one likes me when I say it. They tell themselves and each other that it's just discipline, and that everyone who fails ultimately failed becuase they lacked discipline. But if that were true, you'd think that more than 1% of the morbidly obese would manage with discipline to get down to normalweight status and achieve it for five years or more. Instead we hold up that 1% as "proof" that everyone can do it "if they really try." It's a freaking LIE.

If you're not obese yet, the best thing you can possibly do is implement very moderate, simple lifestyle changes to prevent yourself from gaining any more weight, and to very slowly and carefully take off a few extra pounds. If you are obese, you should make moderate--MODERATE--attempts to change your lifestyle and if it doesn't work to get you down to healthy weight you need to consult a physician. And not just any physician, but one with a LOT of experience with treating obest patients. You'll be looking to get a lot of tests done, you may need medication and if you're a hundred pounds or more overweight and can't get it off by medication and lifestyle changes you should absolutely look at surgery, because that excess fat will kill you, and sitting around telling yourself how undisciplined and lazy you are and beating yourself up does not help.

Decimation's too good for 'em.

I mean, only one in ten destroyed? Let's try for one in two.

Suggested moderate lifestlye changes for weight loss -

Drink less soda, I suggest switching from soda to 100% natural fruit juice(my preferences are apple and pineapple, v8 is a good substitute too). I loved root beer, still do, but I save it for an occassional treat after a really tough day. If I drink soda at a restaraunt, keep it diet or at least drink sprite, which isn't quite as bad. Overall, this lost me about two or three pounds.

Join a gym - good old exercise is a great way to lose weight and keep it off, better than any diet. I try to exercise for one hour, four days a week. Mainly I just get on the treadmill. Also, start slow, work your way into it - start at 30 minutes per session, work your way up in time and intensity. You have to build going to the gym as a habit. This lost me nine pounds, and counting. If you don't have time for it, do 50 sit ups a day, and once again work your way into it, don't try to start all at once.

Eat a salad for lunch now and then - while I was working at my internship, I had a burger once a week, vegetable plates two or three times, and a salad one or two times. I usually correlated it to what I was planning on for dinner - if I was getting a bigger dinner, I'd eat less for lunch, or visa versa. This lost me a couple pounds as well, for hardly doing anything.

All perfectly fine advice for someone with minor weight issues, John, and if you keep it up that way you will probably avoid ever becoming obese.

Oh, a couple more things -

With the exercise, the weight loss doesn't account for the weight that was gained by muscle mass, so the weight loss from fat was a bit more than nine pounds.

One more suggestion - pick two of your vices and forego the rest. High calorie vices - sodas, sweets, liquor, spicy foods(like mexican), ect. Pick the two you like best, and allow yourself those(though don't increase the ammount you partake in, this would offset your quitting the others).

Deconstructing obesity?

Christ, and to think that I used to believe in any of this stuff. It sounds like the shouting of foaming maniacs.

The only think that "society" (i.e., the government) should do to help combat obesity is to stop "supporting" the price of sugar so that manufacturers will use it again in place of high fructose corn syrup. Can't hurt.

Well I am not afraid to tell you my story a bit on getting heavy. I have always struggled to keep my figure.

I grew up with pony tails and bobbie socks. We had some real sexy women that we tried to role model after. The average sizes were 12 and 14. Well Lucy Recardo wore 12's and 14's. Marilyn Monroe struggled to keep herself down to a 10 or 12. Jayne Mansfield was a 14. Sophia Loren was between a 10 & 12. And a drop and fall over beauty I personally knew and played tennis with was Elke Sommer that kept a perfect 10!

She watched what she ate like a hawk. I worked in The Martinique Drury Lane Theatre in Chicago. We had an apartment upstairs where the movie stars stayed while they were in their plays there. Elke would call down to the Martinique, which was the restaraunt. She would eat whole cloves of garlic, it had to be fresh along with her small portions of a well rounded diet. A meat, or fish, chicken along with vegetables. At night it would be a salad because she said she needed the nutritional qualities of a salad and before her performance a light meal was better.

She told me being from Germany she grew up on heavy laden meals with thick sauces and she was a pudgy little girl that had to exercise everyday to keep her weight down. Ceaser Romero was the same way and he too ate big heavy meals from his country...Dog gone it, can't remember where he came from...Greece?

This was in the mid 70's when I worked with some beautiful and well known actors.

I didn't have a membership to a tennis club but I did go as a quest with Elke and George Hamilton. All of the healthy, sexy slim and trimmers exercised.

By 1974 I had five children. One passed away and another I had to live without for 20 years. That's another story. But with each pregnancy I gained far more than I should have. I'm a woman and after carrying my babies into about the 6th or 7th month, I felt like I looked so ugly, so fat, couldn't see my feet and when I could they were so swollen I went from a size 7 shoe to a 9. My self esteem was down, I would pout to myself and then exercising was down quite a bit especially after my last birth because I had to stay in bed so much.

The 70's to now? I think a lazy way of life starting coming around. I don't mean all day lazy, sit on your buttocks and do nothing. I mean things became easier. Instead of a dinner cooked at home with good nutrition, the fast food came rolling in at a rate that was like the little road runner. Everywhere I went, my neighborhood was building another McDonalds and I remember when they had numbers up on their sighs touting 10,000 hamburgers sold to date, why have you not had one. Then they touted 100,000 hamburgers. Kentucky Fried Chicken...It's Finger Licken Good! Then Burger King...Have it your way!

Well for goodness sakes, what do you think I did!?! Well, my home cooked meals, yes I worked and came home and cooked. But Why? HAPPY MEALS my children wanted. Why Not!?! Mommy, I want the toy. Well, husband working overtime trying to get ahead. I come home from work....Yep, I got lazy. Afterall, we had crock pots to cook a meal in no time. Microwaves were coming around fast and throw your chicken in a bag and, "Shake and Bake"

I did not have to walk up to my Zenith or RCA television anymore. I used to read the newspaper, look and see what was going to be on television, get up off the couch and go turn the dial to our major networks. When I did cook after work I had the children go outside and ride bikes.

Fast forward. Cable television, computers in millions of homes, remote television, remote garage openers, name it. We started moving less. Fast run through food chains. Now, how about mass production of junk food containing things I can not comprehend. Yes, I am dumb and came lazy a lot. Things in the store are easier to prepare and chuck full of hidden fats, sugar, corn syrup.

I had to exeercise a lot after each or my children and I always got back down to a size 10. Elke was really my role model and I watched her exercise every morning in the stars apartment. I saw her doing the sit ups, the sit on the floor and walk on your buttocks, leg curls, you name it. I took her the fan mail and we would chat.

It has always been hard for me to keep my weight down. My sister was a chubby girl and she will tell you she got that way because my Dad spoiled us with candy when we were good. She loved it so much she gobbled it up. She had a bigger appetite than me but I would make her exercise. She blames a lot of it on her lifestyle and choices. She makes no bones about it. I got real heavy twice. Both times I was very depressed, had low self esteem and became sedentary and even just lazy. Lazy is not a bad word. Lazy, Hazy Days of Summer. Many great writers talk about lazy. Lazy can be a state of mind for awhile. Lazy can mean you are just too darn tired, sad or depressed or you want to go sit outside and veg for awhile.

Both times I was so very heavy topping 200, I was really not eating right, being sedentary and poor self esteem because of events in my life.

Being fat is an awful feeling. Trying to fit into what society calls, pretty, sexy and thin and good figures is now a size 2, 4 7.

I had to reallly work out again, put down the junk food. Get up from my computer, take walks and even going to counseling and to groups where others shared this same ole' ugly feeling. There is a real comfort in being with other men and women that are hurting because they are chubby, fat, obese.

That's just my long story Dean. This is the first time I have ever chimed in on this issue. It's probably because I have worked hard since leaving Chicago and the heavy weight of some problems and that I live alone now and do get lonely. Things are looking up and I have a car and go to physical therapy for my rhum. but also because I LOVE ME AGAIN. I think I am pretty, I think I am nice and I feel assertive again. My world is getting so busy and new friends are dropping by.

I hope this helped somebody. It can be done. A counselor really helps too when you are heavy. Diets are touted but not warm human touch and understanding. Anyone can write me, I understand.

Thanks, and I really care about this blog and the many regulars that come here.

By and large, anything written by Polly Toynbee can safely be ignored. I started doing that in 1989, and I've been much happier for it.

And Dean, you're full of shit. Overeating is not a disease, except in about 3% of the cases of obesity. Stop drinking the (sugared) Kool-Aid.

Kim: Source for your 3% figure, please?

I like fat people. America: a country where the poor people are fat. Such a thought would have made the poor people throughout history have orgasms. People sneak _into_ this country to escape the skinniness. I have had it with Communists.