This is pretty much how I felt when I read these comments. The argument being made by the piece is that weight is treated as a binary issue, without nuance. Yes

This is pretty much how I felt when I read these comments. The argument being made by the piece is that weight is treated as a binary issue, without nuance. Yes, the problem is there—it's apparent, they see it right in front of them, thanks for noticing—but that doesn't mean that other issues should be looked over in diagnosis. Some doctor choosing not to even consider a patient's medical problem without looking past a single issue—especially when that patient is actually seeing some success in dealing with that issue on their own, as seen in the Patty Nece example highlighted by the Times—is a waste of everyone's time. From a purely economic perspective, a patient who is paying thousands of dollars for insurance and not-insignificant copays is not getting what they paid for if the doctor treats their patients in this way. Yes, weight loss solves a lot of problems, but the complication of losing weight for the myriad metabolism types out there makes the solution a challenging one for many types of people. For all the doctors know, their patients could be walking five miles a day and eating a 1,500-calorie vegan diet, but finding their success rate doesn't match the amount of work they're putting in. Their weight may yo-yo in a dramatic way that can make sustaining a healthy weight very challenging. Weight loss is not like aspirin. It doesn't work exactly the same for everyone. (And there are bad ways of losing weight, of course.) This Times article from May, while it obviously highlights extreme cases (Biggest Loser contestants), is worth bringing up in the context of this conversation: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-loss.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weigh... Obesity is a hard problem to solve as a society. To solve that problem, we have to consider the issue thoughtfully, from all sides.