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The problem with the whole---personal responsibly fat dialog--- is that it seems like it should make sense, but it doesn't.
Whole societies get fat when hyper processed super tasty high calorie food is inserted into a culture that doesn't have a very strong shame based immunity, when you drive everywhere and work at a desk etc..etcc... The experiment has been done in dozens of countries around the world.
When half your country is fat, and as you rightly point out, it isn't the half you would pick based on your culture war write up here, then something else is going on. It isn't a self discipline thing for the most part, it can be, if someone has a high enough level of it, or really enjoys exercise, or will be relentlessly shamed for being fat at all times. But that only works for a very small portion of the people with the propensity to get fat, and it needs to work every single day for the rest of their lives.
Humans are simply not evolved to be in an environment with this much abundance. Luckily the same scientific principles that have provided this abundance are now going to help solve the obesity problem by bringing baseline hunger levels more in line with people who are naturally slim. My buddy got on generic Wegovy and has gone from 260 to 220 in 2 months. It is pretty great that you can now take a pill or a shot to de-fat yourself without white knuckling every bit of food you pass for years on end.
I agree with the statement one of your examples made there, obesity is not some sort of moral failing that people need to be punished for. Fat humans are not made for this level of delicious high calorie food availability. We should give them the opportunity to take a free magic pill that will make them skinny. Now if they refuse to do that, then it is a moral failing/choice to be fat.
Most of these problems have an environmental component to them. Highly processed super-palatable food available for consumption almost everywhere you care to look at very cheap prices does create an environmental that favors obesity. But that’s not the whole thing. You still have at least some choice in the matter. The food doesn’t leap into your mouth and down your throat. And therefore you do have choices. You can remove such food from your environment— you can’t overeat on the cookies that you never bought in the first place. You can choose to not buy or use processed foods, which people doing various specialty diets tend to do, whether it’s keto, paleo, vegan, or carnivore. You can control the portion sizes as well. If you don’t eat double cheeseburgers you eat fewer calories.
I tend to be skeptical of drug induced weight loss simply because we haven’t been doing these trials long term. Nobody knows what these Ozempic and generic brands of ozempic will do long term. FenFen was a popular weight loss drug in the 1990s and 2000s. It turned out to damage the heart. Maybe the new class of drugs is better, but we don’t really have 10-20 years of use.
Perhaps what we need is dram shop / over-serving laws but for food.
If somebody looks visibly inebriated, then serving them more alcohol can get you in trouble.
Similarly, if somebody looks visibly overfed, then it should be illegal to give them fattening foods (most products currently sold would qualify). Eateries would have to have a special menu specifically designed to be filling on low calories for these customers.
Another solution if we're willing to exert as much effort preventing obesity as we did covid: The Anti-Gluttony Door in Portugal's Alcobaça Monastery - can't go to the refectory until you need it.
The "Anti-Gluttony Door" is a myth, it's a serving hatch for trays of food:
https://fakehistoryhunter.net/2021/10/09/not-a-monasterys-anti-gluttony-door/
I still like the concept!
Yet another, I'm wrong, but I like the directionality of the fake news, or it is funny, so I'm not really wrong. I see this in almost every response to being tricked by fake news.
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While this is true, it's not the entire truth. I've been fat all my life, and I can tell you that I've never eaten a double cheeseburger. Indeed, for my early life, I hadn't access to such fast food (apart from chip shop chips, and that was very occasionally).
It is largely my own fault for eating too much and not exercising enough, but there is also the element of being constantly hungry. It's easy to say "oh just put up with being hungry, the feeling will pass after a couple of days" but not when it's at this kind of "I just ate two hours ago, it's impossible that I should be hungry now again, and yet all the signals my body is sending are 'eat eat eat'" level.
I mean yes. It’s not like double cheeseburgers are magically fattening or something. And I understand that for some people it’s harder than others. But at the same time, unless you have no self control at all, some level of self denial is necessary and probably helpful. I think part of the issue is a cultural change that encourages snacking and never let someone feel hungry. In the 1970s and 1980s it was considered fairly normal to eat three meals and a small snack all day. Yes, people probably got hungry in between times, but I think that’s a normal thing. People get hungry or tired and so on and keep going.
Maybe this is just me personally but I find it empowering to some degree to challenge my limits and find out that I’m not a slave to my body. Just because I am tired, that doesn’t mean I can’t go lift weights or run a mile or whatever I need to get done to be healthy. Nor do I have to eat just because food is available or I feel slightly hungry. I can decide to give in or not.
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About a quarter of the world practices a religion where for one month a year adherents don’t eat from dawn to dusk.
One way of promoting agency is giving examples of other people that have done the thing that someone has convinced themselves is nearly or truly impossible for them.
Islamic countries have very high obesity rates, though.
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It is a lot safer than being fat. Which is pretty much the worst thing for you. So if the options are a tested, approved and proven drug vs certain health problems that choice is clear. You also need to be the kind of person who can make those choices to not overeat or buy cookies etc...if you aren't that person, there is no way to make yourself that person.
Everyone knows what they need to do to be healthy, it isn't a lack of knowledge that makes people fat. Almost all diet and exercise plans fail. This isn't a problem any but a very small percentage of the population of fat people can "will" there way out of, as has been proven by the failure rates of around 95% (Freedhoff, 2014). I Think there just something in certain people that feel like a "magic pill" or drug is cheating somehow and you should have to struggle and go without to achieve fitness.
Diets don't work. A 95% failure rate proves this. America needs the drugs to fix this.
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