http://www.inquisitr.com/3269209/mother-and-daughter-deemed-too-fat-to-work-is-obesity-a-valid-disability-excuse/

Morbidly obese mother-daughter received $51k annually because they're too obese to work (This fund is meant for disabled people who couldn't work).
The neighbours said that the mother-daughter pair couldn't even walk without the help of electronic chairs. But, said mother-daughter allegedly refused any dieting program and said that they had no plan to slim down.

Wonder what they do from day to day besides eating and sleeping.

That is absolutely ridiculous. It's one thing if they are getting this money to improve themselves and get jobs, but it is a completely different thing to take it and just mooch off of the government. There are people that actually need that money, and they are cheating the system so that they don't need to do a days work, when they could get their lives on track and be perfectly capable of working again. Disgusting.

>>2 I agree with you. It is one thing to say "we have a problem and you are helping us solve it" and an entirely different story to say "we have a problem and your funds are helping us not need to solve it..." Ridiculousness should stop.

I have no reason to see why self-induced obesity can count for disability. It's a sickness, both mental and physical, for sure, but it would make more sense for them to be sent to a facility to get help (and maybe take nutrition classes), than to be given checks they can spend however they want. Sounds like they're taking advantage of their self imposed disease.

However, it probably doesn't help that the food that's good for you (i.e. fresh, organic vegetables) is more expensive than a box of twinkies. But,
>>2 like you said, they already werent spending money on improving their health, so that probably doesn't matter to them either.

A lot of good arguments for obesity being a valid disability have been coming forward in recent studies.

One you're past a certain point of 'obese', it's incredibly difficult to stay slimmed down on a technical level. Our bodies haven't adapted away from survival mode yet and still want to hold onto the extra weight in case of emergencies. Meanwhile, long-term dieting has been shown to wreck havoc on your system and significantly decrease your metabolism compared to people of the same weight/size. (Though water fasting is shown to increase your metabolism, there's a lot of stigma against it in the medical community.) Cells that have been inflated by obesity are more prone to holding onto more fat than they need, while a normal person's body will try to reject it before it will hold onto it, etc.

All of this combines to make losing weight and keeping it off nearly impossible for most obese people. They need to eat far less food than the average person just to maintain their weight after losing, and even slight indulgences can cause significant weight gain. Every time they gain weight and have to lose it again, these symptoms get worse and worse and obviously more difficult to handle.

I can definitely see obesity being recognized as a (possibly permanent) disability, especially for those who first encountered obesity as a child or while under certain medication, after surgery, due to mental illness, etc. (i.e. something out of their control).

>>5
If obesity is a disability, so is depression and anxiety. And what about the people with chronic sleeping problems? If you think of it like that, there'd be no end to disabled people.
Even if it's hard to be normal weight, they should at least keep themselves from being MORBIDLY obese, to the extend they can't walk anymore.
Dieting is rubbish. Exercise will do the trick.

>>6 "Dieting is rubbish. Exercise will do the trick." Except that... that's scientifically false? Exercise alone does very little to help weight loss. Just slightly overeating will undo your exercise for the day completely as far as weight and calories go, meanwhile you burn far more just by limiting your food intake than you do by exercising daily; this should be common knowledge.

Exercise is great. Combined with a reasonable intake of protein, it will build your muscles and help keep your body going. But as far as weight loss (or joint health, for that matter) goes, it shouldn't be your go-to.

"so is depression and anxiety. And what about the people with chronic sleeping problems?" If these problems impact your individual life to the point where you are honestly unable to work, then yes, you are disabled and should be receiving disability. That's why it exists.

"there'd be no end to disabled people" If we had decent health care and actually tried to help them in the first place, there'd be far less people eligible for disability, yes. But we don't, and we didn't. So we have to take care of those who are unable to take care of themselves. That's just part of our responsibility as people who leach off the safety of an existing society.

"they should at least keep themselves from being MORBIDLY obese" When you've dieted your body to hell and back to the point where you can barely eat without gaining weight, that's an incredibly difficult thing to do. It's not as if they all gorged themselves every day for a few years. Overeating a couple bites here and there -- an extra serving at holiday dinner, a brownie at a friend's house, etc. -- piles up over the years.

Are there some people with addictive or obsessive behavior who get this way because they like to stuff their faces? Yes. The media loves to show them off. But there are plenty of others who are simply ignorant and don't realize how fucked they're bodies have gotten. Regardless, if you can't work, you can't work, and we can't have you rolling around the streets as the alternative.

>>7
According to science, a combination of diet & exercise will work. Emphasis on exercise and not binge dieting.
How bad do depressions and anxiety has to be before they 'legally' acknowledge that you can't work? Enough to put you in a mental hospital? Some people just crumble away quietly without showing it. Even then, they have no choice but to keep going.
So there's no decent health care. So what? A few binge eating here and there doesn't make you morbidly obese. It's only when you put no effort to control your weight. As exampled in the article, canned food and no veggies. That's not unable to work, that's slacking.

And yes, it's an attack by the media (photos and names and all), but before you talk about ignorance (how American), those other fucked up people will be ousted once they're found. Isn't that how it usually goes there? People judge what they can see.
Don't spoil people who have given up on life is what I think. People like that needs a slap and then a pat on the head, not royal treatment.

>>8 The combination will help, yes, as it will burn a few extra calories. Exercise alone can not do much. I assume by "binge" dieting you mean crash dieting, and yes, encouraging generally good habits > deprivation is important. But research is showing that taking your diets slow isn't as good for you physically as we think, so crash dieting may be the way to go in the long run. It's just a matter of ensuring people are in the right mental state to do so and are being monitored by doctors.

"How bad do depressions and anxiety has to be before they 'legally' acknowledge that you can't work?" For the few mental illnesses that are recognized for disability, it's handled on a case-by-case basis. You're observed and tested for a period of time to see whether or not you can handle day to day tasks, as well as the tasks you'd be expected to perform in the industries you worked in before their onset. The same goes for physical disabilities.

Coming from a US perspective^: You're almost always rejected the first time(s) and need further testing; it's very, very difficult to get approved. Being suspicious of anyone on disability here (can't talk for Scotland) is incredibly silly with how impossible it is to get approved.

"A few binge eating here and there doesn't make you morbidly obese." Except that it literally can. Weight doesn't magically go away once you gain it unless you under-eat or over-exercise after, and it gets harder to lose what you gain every time you do so. It only takes a little bit of binging to gain a significant amount once you've crossed that threshold.

"before you talk about ignorance (how American)" Do you have a problem with the existence of legitimate vocabulary? Sometimes people just aren't aware of these things, whether it's because of their environment or the only recent discovery of said information. There's nothing bad about bringing that up as a point of interest to explain someone's behavior or struggle with a topic.

"As exampled in the article, canned food and no veggies." While the sodium in canned food causes water retention, it's not innately bad for you. What you eat is less relevant to weight loss than the amount of it. Not sure what your point is here. Yes, the women in the article given here are off-kilter, but I don't feel they make the overarching topic any less legitimate of a discussion.

"Don't spoil people who have given up on life is what I think." Don't be jealous of people who are struggling in ways you can't understand getting assistance is what I think. It's sad and pathetic to watch people who are capable of taking care of themselves finding offense in others being assisted. Just know that if you have a time of need, society'll be around to help; in the mean time, be grateful you have the freedom to assume everyone has the same emotional or physical capacity that you do. (imo)

>>9
Not the vocabulary itself, but the pragmatics. In the past, "ignorant" is not to be uttered lightly. The proper manners are you have to really familiarize yourself with the subject and reach certain depts of understanding before you have the privilege to say ignorant. Now, people can just read the news and claim that people who haven't read the news ignorant.

Expecting people not to be jealous is a tall order, because they can't. It's human nature. The first thing they'll see when reading this news is free money for obese people who can't be bothered to work. And for those who have big enough hearts to doubt, it's not one person, but a mother-daughter pair with a love your body' policy. And if that wasn't enough, they rejected any dieting program. I'm not saying they should go to jail, but if they don't make the effort, then that's it.
Society is a cold place. Any non-functional member will be pushed and rehabilitated, or otherwise disposed of.

And canned foods are low in nutrients, loaded in preservatives and carcinogenic. So they'll be hearing from health insurance next.

Now for the long-awaited hypocritical verdict: These people shouldn't be given money, they should be given counselling.

>>10 I rarely discuss topics in depth until I've highly familiarized myself with them, so even in that context, I'd feel comfortable using the term.

Regardless, "ignorance" has no such connotation. It simply implies a lack of knowledge on a topic. This can be one small aspect of a topic or the topic as a whole, and it refers to an objective state that is not affected by the personal knowledge of he who uses the word. It is either true or false. There is no subjective context or mannerism around the term, as can be seen in how early literature utilizes the term.

"Society is a cold place." Only if you make it such. "And canned foods are... carcinogenic." Only those that still use BPA coatings inside (mostly an American problem), or are from shady areas using strange fertilizers/etc., have the potential to be carcinogenic. The concept of canned food does not cause cancer.

"These people... should be given counselling." Of course they should. Counselling, etc. should be a part of their disability pay, just as physical therapy should be for those with physical problems, etc. Disability isn't supposed to just pay people to rot. If that's how Scotland's system works, I can see how it's a problem.

>>11
The canned food plagues isn't limited to just America. And given how it's 51k annually for two people (not sure?), they're probably buying cheap, sketchy brands.
Also from what I can gather in the article, it's implied that they're offered councelling and refused. Even then the fund kept going, so it's blah.

.

Diet and exercise only work in the short term. The body will try to get its reserve back, even if that means refusing to turn the consumed food into energy. It's a serious struggle. And yes, what they are eating doesn't help, for a variety of reasons.

But everybody with a disability will struggle with basic things and life will always be harder for them, no matter what we do. That doesn't stop people from trying. The physical therapy is a good example. For these morbidly obese people, diet and exercise may not solve the problem, but the problem will only get worse if they don't do anything about it. If they refuse to help themselves, then I don't see why we should expect the government to help them.

If they didn't refuse the help, and it just didn't work, then I could understand it. But they are not trying. Not to mention, there are jobs that one can do from home. Getting a job without leaving the house may be complicated, and perhaps the government could help with that, but they do have options. They could be at least attempting any of these things. But saying directly that they have no intention of ever doing anything to even try to improve their situation says to me that they don't deserve to have someone else come in and solve their problem for them. People have to at least attempt. You help those who are struggling, not those who are sitting back telling you to do everything for them. Even if you think it's futile, you have to at least try.

I disagree with them and think that there way of life is disgusting. that being said I won't do anything about them except adjust laws so that people who can't work because they choose to eat way too much and have become too fat for their own good maybe but as a person I will not do anything about them. they are not worth my personal time and energy. If they live like that they will likely die early anyway.