Has anyone here every considered that overeating might not be the cause of obesity, but rather a consequence of it? I urge you to take the time to consider the idea.
Take a child, for example. Children do not grow because they eat a lot. They eat a lot because they are growing. Due to endocrine factors, their bodies partition a large proportion of the energy they consume to storage (in bone, muscle, organs, adipose tissue, etc.). It is possible, even quite likely, that the same principle that holds for vertical growth also holds for horizontal growth.
This isn't trivial, because it has profound implications for how we treat obesity. Rather than focusing on getting obese people to eat less, which is the current model for weight loss, we should be focusing on getting their bodies to store a smaller proportion of their energy as fat (and this means altering the macronutrient composition of the diet). It also means that we could stop blaming obese people for their condition, attributing it to gluttony or lack of will-power. I have no more willpower than the average person (who is overweight or obese) and yet I stay lean effortlessly because I know how to eat in order to limit energy storage in my adipose tissue.
Basically, if obesity were caused by overeating, it would be an easy problem to solve. The simple solution would be to eat less (which almost everyone who is obese has tried to do, usually without long-term results). Has anyone here who is lean actually tried overeating for a long period of time? I think you will find that it's a lot more difficult than the health media would have you believe.
So no, I do not think that obesity is an eating disorder. I think that it is a fat storage disorder (the primary cause of which is endocrine), resulting in a tendency to overeat. Any thoughts?