The cost of inaction when it comes to obesity in Canada is estimated to be $27.6 billion annually and nearly one in three Canadians live with the chronic disease. That’s according to a report from Obesity Canada.

Spokesperson for the organization and one of the authors of the report, Dr. Ian Patton, says obesity is a chronic disease and should be treated as such with access to psychological, medical and pharmacological supports to help people. He understands that there are still those who believe people who are overweight are lazy or lack willpower, as opposed to having a chronic disease. But, he says, “There are strong biological factors that kind of influence an individual’s weight status and their obesity. Our bodies actually resist weight loss, so that can be challenging, and that’s why we often times see people yo-yoing back and forth with their weight. There are lots of biological, genetic and environmental factors that play into that.”

Part of the $27.6 billion cost of inaction is the cost of treating patients who are obese who have gone on to have other conditions like type 2 diabetes, heart disease and some forms of cancer. Another part of the cost is the cost to the individual. Patton says from their data, they have found that people who are obese make less on average than those of a healthy weight at an annual cost across Canada of $3.8 billion, and women with obesity earn four per cent less annually than healthy-weight women.

Click here to access the report. To tackle the costs, Patton says, health care professionals and policy makers need to tackle obesity as the chronic disease it is, like would be done for other chronic diseases.