It is about the usage of 'just'. So while in the first case people think the just is justified, the before mentioned data indicates that only a few people manage to 'just' do it. The order of percentage of ppl beeing able to do it is the same as something which seems very hard to do (the everest thing). So while objectively they are comparable it shines light on that the usage of 'just' is bad in both cases while the subjective perception is very different.
Not sure if I can make it clearer.
Edit:maybe I was thinking to complicated in this reply. The analogy is: you have two different things which can be achieved through doing a specific thing, but doing this thing is hard in both cases so using the word 'just' is not appropriate which is easier to see in the example.
Yes. The odds of someone climbing without supplemental oxygen vs achieving and maintaining weight loss are comparably low, presumably because they are very difficult, and cannot “just” be chosen so simply.
Some people preferring being obese because they are happy about eating lots of food isn’t really a counterargument to the fact that losing weight is as simple as eating less.
Honestly I am doing quite well by following those simple practices. But creating wealth out of nothing is surely more difficult than eating less of what you already have access to.
Anyway, the point was that being ok with being obese because you are happiest eating a lot doesn’t make eating less any more complicated. It’s just choosing to do something different, which everyone is free to do.
Sliding infinitly far on your socks is totally easy in a world where you ignore friction and the human need to eat/sleep/etc.
Similarily it is totally easy to imagine getting fit/slim by ignoring the forces acting on someone who is obese. Of course one can do that if it fits with ones world image, but I tend to like my models closer to reality.
Don't underestimate what it does to a kid if e.g. one parent has troubles expressing love through any other means than cooking. Suddenly love comes in the form of food. Similar with situation where ancestors nearly starved — this can fuck up multiple generations. Both examples will take conscious effort to tackle one's psychological drivers, maybe therapy, but quite certainly a lot of time and effort.
Think about a bad habbit you tried to loose and multiply it by a magnitude then you get a glimpse of what this would feel like for an actual obese person (note: I am not obese, neither have I ever been obese). This is why "just eat less and move more" as a statement is ridiculous: a bit like "have you just tried not to be poor" or "have you tried not being depressed all the time". While factually correct it displays ignorance of the forces at play.
If you are happy as you are and don’t want to lose weight, why would you be eating less in the first place much less running into psychological problems preventing you from doing so?
If the part I don’t understand is that there is no such thing as being overweight and happy, and people who feel that way have psychological defects, then it’s not that I don’t understand your point but I do disagree.
Maybe you should have a serious dialogue with any obese person to figure out why it is hard for them if you care about forming a model of the world that represents actual reality.
Most obese people are not happy with their body or the ways their eating habits impact their live in many ways. Most obese people are also happy when they eat or worse: they are unhappy when they don't eat.
If eating gives you a short term improvement even if it makes you unhappy in the long term then you might just do it, like in any other addiction (btw. a well researched topic).
The way out of this is not to "just eat less", the way out of this is to tackle the reason why you only can be happy when eating and then eat less.
the psychology was just described to you above. Not sure what foundation you have to "disagree" with. Human actions and thought patterns are not some libertarian utopia of perfect rational behavior based on an economics equation
Isn’t that what is happening? I was just in the US for a couple weeks (Portland, OR) and rules were minimal and optional everywhere. Not the kind of thing that would drive mental health issues, as best I could tell.
If the truth ever got out and it became common knowledge that one of the most iconic African animals wasn’t even real, and that Disney has been lying to us for decades, the company would be in major economic danger.
Ben Eater’s YouTube videos are a great crash course on how computers work, and will make this kind of stuff (and much more) way more obvious if you watch.
He seems like a genius but he has also stated that he is mentally ill. This article seems to mythologize the mental illness parts in a really off-putting way.
