[pjerem]

The whole discussion here is about the environment though.

In absolute, changing diet is not inherently hard : it's pretty easy to eat a balanced diet and get pleasure from it.

But it's not enough to just say "eat better", "do more sports" : people can't change the way the lived their whole life if you don't educate and help them to make the change. The education on this topic is so poor that we are still confusing balanced diet and low-calorie diet.

And then there is the elephant in the room which is the refined sugar : for some dubious reason, most scientists agree that refined sugar acts like a hard drug but nobody officially wants to call it a drug. Recent research are saying that the addictive effects of refined sugar are akin to heroin. That's a serious issue then. What it means is that a doctor asking his patient to eat less sugar / eat a balanced diet without further guidance or help is just like saying to an heroin addict that he should stop.

I'm relatively overweight and pretty self educated on the topic but I still decided to work with a nutritionist to change my diet and we are talking about months if not years of follow-up. Eating habits are largely automated by our biology : willpower and education are nothing against an hypoglycemia induced sugar craving.

Like drugs, most people need help and guidance on the long term to change those habits. But what's even worse is that unlike drugs, unhealthy products are basically everywhere in your supermarket, your TV ads, your billboards, your friends lifestyle, and even worse, profoundly ingrained in the culture. You have to fight the "drug" but also the whole capitalist world around you.

[arkh]

> In absolute, changing diet is not inherently hard : it's pretty easy to eat a balanced diet and get pleasure from it.

But even a balanced diet can let you put weight if you eat too much.

We know genetics disorder like Prader-Willis can cause insatiable appetite. Even with a "balanced diet" those affected by it will end-up obese.

Now the current research on GLP-1 hint at many people having a harder time feeling satiated, not to the Prader-Willis point but still worse than what is considered normal. For people who don't have the problem it is easy to think they just have more discipline / willpower and that's why they're thin. I'd like them to imagine what would happen if after eating 2 or 3 pizza slices they'd still feel like their stomach is empty. What if it's not a one time occurrence but all day every day from the moment they develop a conscience to their death bed. A little like drug addiction but you need some drug to live so it is legal and you can buy it everywhere. Still think you'd have the discipline to not go for the whole pizza?

[pjerem]

I totally agree with you but "being obese" is just a data point. Being obese is defined by your ICM, which means nothing else than being heavier than the norm.

Being obese with a balanced diet is absolutely not the same thing than being obese because you eat too much "bad" calories. Obese or not, a balanced diet gives you everything your body needs to function properly, be able to move and for your mind to be clear.

The thing is, obesity is a really, really recent trend in humanity history, so recent that a lot of countries are still not concerned by the phenomena (but it's changing). It's pretty certain that _something_ in the environment changed recently and made the humans obese.

People who blames other people willpower just don't understand that if obesity is in an uptrend, it means that people who were previously healthy are becoming obese for some reason. Something new pressurizes humans to become obese and the only question is not if you are concerned but when will the pressure be high enough.

I think it's refined sugar. Plus a bonus of sedentary lifestyles.

[vinhcognito]

> I'd like them to imagine what would happen if after eating 2 or 3 pizza slices they'd still feel like their stomach is empty

Even that is the generous interpretation. Imagine instead of just their regular (or lack of) hunger signals, people had an alarm constantly ringing in the head telling them to eat all the time, that was only ever silenced if they over ate. The persistence of it pushes it in the direction of mental torture.

Yes, technically it can be overcome, but it is a huge tax on your life.

The truth is we can never really know what someone else's inner experience is.