I am not looking down my nose at anyone. If I have control of one aspect of my life, that doesn't make me a better person than the one who does not have control of that part of their life.
There is plenty of evidence of the horrendous eating habits that cause Americans to be overweight. You citing one book with one theory does not make you correct.
If I concede you are 100% correct about some people having metabolic disorders it does nothing to help the people who are overweight because they eat poorly and overeat. It is enabling that behavior to give them a scientific excuse that likely does not apply to them. You cite 'thousands' over 20 years to say it is not rare, when the group I am talking about is Millions of obese Americans.
I don't know why we have become a society that thinks it is inconsiderate to look at an overweight person and tell them they should eat less. That is more likely to help with the emotional problems you mention than to tell them don't worry maybe you were born that way.
Of course if someone has a weight issue and eats a healthy diet, exercises regularly and burns more calories than they consume and are gaining weight, that is a medical issue. But that is not what the majority of overweight Americans are doing. Again, just look at the volume of doughnuts, pizza, McDonalds, ice cream, etc, etc that are consumed and its clear that American choose to eat horribly and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to tie that and the egregious rate of obesity together.
Finally, yes, overweight people certainly should look to people who are in shape and try to 'do as they do' just as people with heavy credit card debt should look to people who have that under control, or people with relationship problems should turn to friends with strong relationships for advice, and people who are underemployed should look to those who are exceeding their education, etc, etc. Its a shame that you seem to be reducing the value of a person to their weight and feel the best thing to do is to help them abandon responsibility to work hard to correct it.
There can be two classes of overweight people.
1. Those who live on doughnuts and pizza and care nothing about losing weight.
2. Those who care about losing weight and try diets and exercise and try so much
to get a handle on their weight problem.
I am not talking about the first group and the MD who did the research is not addressing
those people also. We are talking about the second group and there are millions and millions
of people in this group as can be attested to by the multi-billion dollar diet industry.
All the Jenny Craig type organizations etc.
Diets upon diets upon diets. People want to loose weight. You don't have to tell these people
to "eat less". They do but still fail.
The average American dieter makes 4 attempts per year!
Again diets and exercise will not work long term if there is an underlying metabolic issue.
I would imagine after trying for years many give up and join the group 1 people.
Credit cards are not medical issues.
you say:
"Its a shame that you seem to be reducing the value of a person to their weight and feel the best thing to do is to help them abandon responsibility to work hard to correct it"
This is total bull. People who try dieting and fail are NOT failing to work hard. You want
to throw out a credit card analogy, try this. What you are suggesting is like a 6'9 guy telling
a 5'6 guy to keep jumping and he'll be able to dunk that ball in time.
You just do not have an understanding of the issues here.
By the way, the one book I mentioned is not all the research on this issue. The physiological issue here
was seen and investigated back as far as the 1920's and 30's by some of the best endocrinologist. Only recently has science had the tools to discover the secrets of the complex metabolic path ways which has been able to substantiate theories of these early pioneers.
If people have tried diets and exercise and still can not control their weight they need to see a
endocrinologist that really understands the multiple possibilities of their metabolic processes
being compromised. This is a lot better advice than to say ... keep jumping.