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I do not assert moral superiority and I do not think people who muster the will to exercise and lose weight are morally superior to those who don't. That's all projection on your part.
Willpower is probably another nature/nurture combination, and the will to lose weight specifically probably comes from a combination of inherent ability to stick to a goal, and the level of your motivation to accomplish that goal. I am not morally impugning fat people (though I admit feeling a great deal of disdain for the "fat acceptance" movement and HAES, which I think is 90% cope). I am saying that the solution is the obvious one, we understand the science pretty well, and just so stories like Set Point Theory and "microbiomes that make you want to be more sedentary" are not well-supported scientifically.
Of course exercise is more difficult for some people than for others. People's bodies undoubtedly affect how enjoyable exercise is and how much aptitude they have for it. People have different metabolisms. And people enjoy different things. There are people who genuinely enjoy exercise; most don't. For fat people in particular, exercise is particularly grueling because they get tired more easily and they probably do experience more pain. Most people who are out of shape find exercising painful (because your body will protest when forced to do things it isn't accustomed to doing) and fat adds extra weight and fatigue to that. All of this is true, and none of this contradicts what I'm saying.
I used to be obese. Now I am slightly overweight (according to my BMI) though I don't look particularly overweight. I took it off with diet and exercise. I don't think I'm a paragon of virtue or willpower; I just reached a point where being fat sucked more than exercise did. Now my weight has remained steady for years (goes up a bit when I get lazy and snack more, goes down a bit when I am more disciplined). Those aren't moral judgments; they are just facts. I exercise regularly despite not particularly enjoying it, because I enjoy the feeling of having exercised, and the fact that I know I feel much better when I exercise regularly than when I don't. (I also do mostly weights and not enough cardio, even though I know I should do more cardio, because I don't like cardio. So obviously, my willpower and ability to do what I know I should be doing is not perfect.) I had back pain and shortness of breath that disappeared after I lost the weight. I am in better health than people much younger than me, just because I'm not fat. This all speaks to my motivation; I could very easily have taken another path (to just accepting that I'm going to be fat, and eating whatever I want) and I very nearly did. I can't tell you why I chose A over B, but I don't think it's because my Willpower stat is inherently higher. I do think my experience is (broadly but not universally) generalizeable; people can choose to do the thing. I don't particularly judge people who don't, because I know it's hard and not fun. But I also know it is a choice.
I'll bite the bullet and be the strawman here - yes, all else equal, people that are fit and maintain their weight are morally superior to those that don't. You can explain to me the complex biological underpinnings of why some people have a harder time doing that and I will still think they are morally inferior to people that do it. I grasp that compulsive liars and addicts may lack the same full capacity for agency as others, but I still think they're morally inferior to people that are honest and temperate. Ultimately, I judge someone's moral positioning by their actions and the traits exemplified by sloth and gluttony are poor ones.
Does this come off as smug, self-satisfied, and self-serving? I'm sure it does, but I'm not inclined to pretend people that ruin their bodies through a lack of agency aren't demonstrating a condemnable moral failing.
I guess, "all else equal," but that's a caveat that pretty much makes the generalization useless. Do you think a skinny smoker is morally superior to a fat non-smoker? Is a very fit guy who cheats on his wife morally superior to a fat guy who's a great husband?
Sure, I understand what you're saying here, and those who maintain (or lose) weight have something that makes them "better" in some sense than those who don't, but I think it's way too easy to get judgmental about such a common human failing. I reserve my scorn for those who make excuses or deny agency.
I suppose you can run those hypotheticals with any traits, but if you're thinking about whether a given trait is an indicator of morality, you pretty much have to consider it in a vacuum unless there's a clear interplay between the two. To my knowledge, fit men are not particularly prone to cheating on their wives. All else equal, men that cheat on their wives are immoral compared to men who are faithful. I'm sure that the cheaters, on average, have more opportunities and stronger sex drives - I don't care, the faithful men are still better men.
In real life, I'm unsurprisingly much less likely to have cause to be strident about the matter, it's not like I'm running up on random fat people to lecture them about their moral inferiority. As your hypotheticals illustrate, many of them will be wonderful people when considered across the totality of their person rather than just through the one lens. But yeah, at the end of the day, I think fitness is an important part of character and tends to build other important parts of character.
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Way too many successful fat people IMO. Elon, Trump…
Right, but why do you contend that fat people lack motivation to not be fat, when it’s one of the most salient and omnipresent features of their life? There is nothing that should be more clearly motivating than being fit, which hints to a problem beyond motivation and willpower.
But this can be survivorship bias. What do you believe is special about your case that could have been utilized by the average fat American but wasn’t? We have studies on fat people and dieting / exercise regimens that show poor longterm retention.
Okay, but why were you more motivated than the average fat 40 year old who has seen relatives die, or who has received dire prognoses from their doctor? This is why motivation is a “just so” story. There’s no way to empirically validate that those who ameliorate or cure their obesity are, indeed, more motivated. And if could just as easily be something that boils down to (1) exercising is less painful, due to something related to health or microbiome, (2) food is less desirable, due to same reason.
Being able to stick to one goal doesn't necessarily apply to everything. Lots of very successful and driven people become alcoholics or addicts, can't stop smoking, seem unable to resist engaging in trivially discoverable infidelity or corruption, etc. You keep trying to make universal generalizations about the world that don't fit.
I didn't say fat people categorically lack the motivation to not be fat. Most fat people would like to not be fat. Some of them make an effort to lose weight, some don't, and some who make the effort succeed and some don't.
If you put a plate of cookies in front of me, I know I should only eat one and I definitely should not eat half a dozen. I can tell you from experience that sometimes I resist the temptation and sometimes I don't.
There is nothing special about me. The average fat American can do the same thing I did.
Yes, because controlling your diet and exercising for the rest of your life requires effort. The stat that fat activists often throw around ("90% of diets fail") besides not actually being born out in studies, also has a simple explanation: most people who go on a diet do it until they lose some amount of weight. Then they stop the diet, and gain the weight back. Obviously, temporarily decreasing your caloric intake will not be successful long-term.
I doubt I was more motivated. Sometimes people attempt to do things and they either succeed or fail, and their success or failure is a combination of numerous factors, some of them random. I don't think I have some special gene or metabolism that makes me able to do what other people cannot.
I don't think they are more motivated.
I suppose it could be, but this sounds very unscientific (and probably would have been discovered by now, since we can measure how much pain and desire people feel).
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Why? There are plenty of things I’m vastly more motivated to do than keeping myself fit, so at least in my case, that statement is clearly inaccurate. I imagine the same holds true for most fat people as well.
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