Maybe now I’m piling on, but I’ve got one more thread to pick out of the confrontation between Wisconsin fitness scold Kenneth Krause and news anchorwoman Jennifer Livingston. See my first two comments here and here.

I was thinking of skipping over the kerfuffle about the obese Wisconsin news anchor’s response to the comments by the critical, personal-injury-lawyer fitness freak, but I haven’t blogged all week, and that’s what’s up right now.

My reactions — at least the ones I want to share — are not the typical ones. But if they were, that’d only be greater reason to take a pass.

Ask anyone, and “protecting our kids” is one of our highest values — we have child endangerment laws, and even well into their teens, we ignore their “consent” for some behaviors because we don’t think they’re old enough to know better.

But we only worry about intrusions on their bodies, not their minds.

I was talking politically with someone recently who advised me to back off on my desires and especially my expectations of what policies people will go for, and that raises a pretty fundamental question of advocacy.

Is it better to ask for what you want, or for what you think you can get?

I’m sure community and issue organizers have explored the question exhaustively. that they have concluded that no answer is always correct, and that they know when to zig and when to zag.

But I ain’t them.

Now that I'm back in the gym (three and counting), I'm catching up on podcasts that I don't have/take time for usually.

if a school district wasn’t using crossing guards and parents learned this, how long would it be before the outcry made sure that crossing guards were on duty?

If noxious chemicals were being left out in the chemistry labs and parents found out, how long would it be before safeguards and monitoring was in place? Would the teacher(s) responsible even keep their jobs?

And yet, when schools serve children meals after meals of crap — pizza, fries every day, ketchup as a vegetable, whatever — the knee-jerk is to blame the schools.

You may have noticed — and more likely not — I placed an addendum in my recent post about having gained weight, to identify the amount in question as about five pounds. Could even be 10 — I haven’t weighed myself with any regularity for years. What I know is that my clothing still fits, but a paunch that had left has now returned.

Especially on the level of individuals, perhaps the biggest stumbling block to food addiction’s acceptance as a legitimate problem with specific remedies is that most folks don’t want to think they’re that bad off.

”Sure, I’ve developed a bit of a paunch, maybe, but I just have to be a bit more careful. But an addict? No way.” Certainly that sentiment is true for many people, but in a nation where two out of every three adults are overweight or obese, it may not be true for as many people who would say it.

For some reason, I keep going back to France, even though I haven't had the best of results. I gave this speech to my Toastmasters Club.

My first point today is that obesity is not a disease.

Disease can cause obesity, but to me, obesity is not a disease but a condition —  a result of heredity, behaviors, and often of choices (though not always).

The disease I’m thinking of in that last sentence is, of course, food addiction, which also goes to “... choices (but not always).” Food addicts do engage in behaviors that often result in obesity, but untreated, they (we) don’t have the same power of choice that you have — and that you probably think we should have.