Please learn that the definition of obesity as a disease was not based on any particular set of reproducible factors that would make it a disease, aka a distinct and repeatable pathology, which is how basically every other disease in clinical medicine is defined, but instead, it was done by a vote of the American Medical Association at its convention, over the objections of its own expert committee convened to study the issue. [1] In fact, this designation is so hotly debated that just this year, a 56-member expert panel convened by the Lancet said that obesity is not always a disease. [2]

[1] https://www.medpagetoday.com/meetingcoverage/ama/39918

[2] https://www.newagebd.net/post/health/255408/experts-decide-o...

> a distinct and repeatable pathology, which is how basically every other disease in clinical medicine is defined

Even if you want to split hairs and say that it should be classified as a “syndrome” instead of a “disease”, it doesn’t make a difference because someone suffering from a syndrome with an unknown pathology is still unhealthy. This isn’t a useful definition because there are many diseases we don’t understand the pathology of, such as virtually all mental illnesses. Furthermore, this definition doesn’t apply to obesity at all because we do know what causes obesity: calorie surplus. The usual counterargument to this is “we don’t know why people overeat” but that’s sophistry because you can always keep asking “why” longer than you can come up with answers. Alcoholism doesn’t stop being a disease just because we don’t know why some people compulsively drink to excess and others don’t, and a guy who drinks a bottle of whiskey every day is not healthy even if he is yet to develop cirrhosis of the liver.

> it was done by a vote of the American Medical Association at its convention, over the objections of its own expert committee convened to study the issue

Yeah, it’s a lot easier for deranged ideologies like HAES to influence a single committee than the entire AMA. This kind of thing is a constant issue and is why I don’t just take institutions and “experts” at their word anymore when they make nonsensical pronouncements.