The perennial question: is obesity your fault? First there's the metabolic factor:
For example, the authors explain, when an individual reduces food intake and his or her body size diminishes, so does the amount of energy needed to maintain and move it. "Therefore, additional weight loss can only be achieved by a more severe diet or a more arduous physical activity routine," they write. "Most individuals do the opposite: After having achieved some weight loss, they resume their original diet and exercise habits. Consequently, weight gain recurs rapidly."
Then there's the wealth factor:
"[S]mall changes in lifestyle would have a minor effect on obesity prevention," they write. But the huge energy imbalance most Americans experience is "far beyond the ability of most individuals to address on a personal level." Instead, they say, changes in the food supply and social infrastructure and more stringent regulations of the food industry will be needed.Katan elaborated in an e-mail: "Studies show that even the most motivated, thoughtful, strong-willed people have a hard time losing weight when huge portions of cheap, tasty, convenient food are available at every turn of the road, and when walking and other forms of exercise are superfluous or impossible."
Our bodies are designed to live in harsh conditions with scarce resources, which means they get fat when exposed to safe conditions with plentiful food. That is: a wealthy society is a fat society.
It's not that there isn't a certain level of willpower that will allow a person to lose weight, it's just that the willpower bar is so high that not many people can reach it despite the best intentions. When we fail to reach the bar, our bodies fall into natural states dictated by their metabolisms and environment.
(HT: ML.)
The root of most American obesity is purchase decisions in the grocery store and decisions to eat out. Without fixing those areas, no amount of willpower or exercise will make a lasting difference.
Asking whether obesity is "your fault" strikes me as a particularly unproductive and unhelpful way to explore the issue. It's useless in the same way that asking "Do people have free will?" is useless, in my opinion.
People want things, people want to do things, and we always do what we want. That's the bottom line: People do what they want to do.
Do people have free will? If you phrase it as "People do what they want", it seems that the answer is Yes... but if you phrase it as "People are slaves to their wants", then the answer is No. It depends on whether the want is a part of the person or some kind of quasi-external parasite.
Life is a hedge-maze of choices and consequences. We don't get to pick what choices we're presented with, we don't get to pick what the consequences of each choice are, we just get to make the choice and pick one set of consequences or another based on what our wants are.
Presented with the choice of buying junk food or not buying junk food, a person buys junk food, and stays overweight. Are you saying that it's not his fault, just because he was presented with a difficult choice and followed his wants?
Say a person kills another person. Are you saying that it's not his fault, just because he was presented with a difficult choice and followed his wants?
The consequences of our choices are our fault and our responsibility. We make those choices based on our wants.
Now...
Our wants sometimes conflict. A more rational and recently-evolved side of us wants us to stay in shape, but an older and more animal side of us wants us to conserve energy and eat everything we can. If the world keeps tempting the animal side more and more effectively, to the point that it overwhelms the rational side more and more often, then you can only say that "This is not my fault" if you don't consider the animal side to be a part of YOU, of your identity, of your self. Which is not unreasonable, if you have a view of your self and your mind as something other than the hardware in your skull. One effective way to combat those animal wants is to set them up as something outside your self, as something that you are fighting against rather than as a part of you that YOU want fulfilled. Today you might hear someone say "My limbic system, which isn't really a part of who I am, is releasing certain chemicals that make me feel hungry, but I must try to ignore it", but this dissociation of one's self from the source of the detrimental wants is psychologically no different from "The Devil is trying to tempt me with this; I must resist!".
So saying that obesity is not the obese people's fault only makes sense to the extent that it makes sense to say "No, it's not their fault, it's the fault of their limbic system!", which makes about as much sense as saying "No, it's not their fault, it's the Devil's fault!".
(And while this may or may not make much sense, it is a psychologically effective way to resist detrimental wants).
This also parallels a political debate. Liberals tend to think that minimum wage should be higher, that WalMart is evil because its jobs have crappy benefits and because it sells things made in terrible working conditions, that the government should ban the sale of foods and products that could be unsafe (i.e. either the product passes some safety/effectiveness criteria, or it's illegal to make and sell), etc. Most conservatives disagree: One should be able to offer a job that pays very little (It's the applicant's choice to apply for it or not, and to accept it or not, and to try to negotiate wages if they want, and to quit if unhappy) and one should be able to offer for sale whatever products they want (It's the consumer's choice to buy them or not, based on being informed about how the products are made, what the risks are, how effectively the products work, etc). It seems to me that conservatives seem to trust that people will make whatever choices are good for them and that it should not be illegal to offer a choice, even when that choice (if taken) would be detrimental to the person taking it and/or to society in general. From that perspective, it seems to me that a conservative would be more likely to say "Obesity is people's fault" while a liberal would be more likely to say "Obesity is the fault of all these evil companies that offer junk food at every turn of the road".
[I tend to take the conservative side of these debates, except when it comes to minimum wage. That is, I think it should not be illegal to make and sell foods and drugs that aren't FDA-certified, as long as their non-certified status is clear. WalMart is not evil; Their practices are allowed by US law, and if people feel like WalMart goes too far, then the laws can be changed, and in the meanwhile people are free to shop elsewhere. A very low minimum wage, on the other hand, is really detrimental to society. Sure, a raised minimum wage will mean that employers will not be able to afford as many employees so unemployment would rise at first, but them more people will have more spending power and the economy (and those people's health) will improve, so enough new jobs would be created to probably make up for the unemployment caused by increasing the minimum wage, and in any case you'd end up with fewer people below the poverty line. I'm no economist, but if you read about how minimum wage was first introduced, the case is pretty good for making sure that people employed full-time earn enough to have a home and to feed and medicate a family].
I think it's a good idea to ask if obesity is one's fault or not. We tend to say that obesity is a disease and that we cannot change our body and bla-bla-bla. This kind of mentality, while not false in itself, does not help resolve the issue.