The birth of Girtherism

[NNadir]

32. I'm a scientist working in the pharmaceutical field. I have worked on lipid physiology...

...for major portions of my career, and am a regular reader of major scientific journals in a cross disciplinary setting.

Included frequently are epidemiological papers. Obesity is a health risk, a very serious one, for diabetes, for heart disease, for strokes, for cancer, and - something with which I am currently struggling - muscular-skeletal syndromes.

Here is an open sourced paper from one of the most credible scientific journals, written by a consortium of health professionals from all over the world, Lancet, covering risk and mortality:

Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015 (Lancet 2016; 388: 1659–724)

I invite you to open the paper, and search terms like BMI and Obesity, and then tell me I don't face risks from my weight.

It includes this text:

Between 1990 and 2015, global exposure to unsafe sanitation, household air pollution, childhood underweight,
childhood stunting, and smoking each decreased by more than 25%. Global exposure for several occupational risks,
high body-mass index (BMI), and drug use increased by more than 25% over the same period. All risks jointly evaluated in 2015 accounted for 57·8% (95% CI 56·6–58·8) of global deaths and 41·2% (39·8–42·8) of DALYs. In 2015, the ten largest contributors to global DALYs among Level 3 risks were high systolic blood pressure (211·8 million [192·7 million to 231·1 million] global DALYs), smoking (148·6 million [134·2 million to 163·1 million]), high fasting plasma glucose (143·1 million [125·1 million to 163·5 million]), high BMI (120·1 million [83·8 million to 158·4 million]), childhood undernutrition (113·3 million [103·9 million to 123·4 million]), ambient particulate matter (103·1 million [90·8 million to 115·1 million]), high total cholesterol (88·7 million [74·6 million to 105·7 million]), household air pollution (85·6 million [66·7 million to 106·1 million]), alcohol use (85·0 million [77·2 million to 93·0 million]), and diets high in sodium (83·0 million [49·3 million to 127·5 million])...

...Societal processes of urbanisation, the so-called westernisation of diets and lifestyles, and changes in employment activities, have all been viewed as primary drivers of changes in human health.21–24 Such shifts have been thought to lead to deteriorating diets, rising obesity, decreased physical activity, and, ultimately, to worsening levels of metabolic risks, with associated higher rates of cardiovascular diseases and cancers.25,26...

The bold is all mine.

You can believe what you want to believe, but this is a factual analysis, and facts matter.

One hears all kinds of things in pop information sites, and 90% of the time they include either huge inaccuracies, distortions, outright lies and/or a complete misapprehension of what is being said. My standard joke is that one cannot get a degree in journalism any more if one has passed a college level science course.

For most of my life, I was able to manage my weight by extreme exercise and rigorous attention to diet. However, I come from a long line of morbidly obese people. I'm not denying a genetic component, but am acknowledging that I can do things - which by the way I'm not doing - to ameliorate the risks of these genes. I am not doing these things now, and I fully and completely recognize my risks in not managing it.

I'm not in denial about my weight and it's effect on my health, irrespective of what journalists say. A lot of what passes for journalism these days is pernicious. I know I have a major health risk in failing to control my weight, but right now am not in condition to remedy it.

If people make fun of my weight - and they do - being an optimist, I tell myself that they care about me. That's not always true of course, but the social pressure to control my weight is one of those rare social pressures that can be good for me.