> For sure. If you are surrounded by a bunch of obese people encouraging you to drink milkshakes all day and making fun of you for working out, that's going to be hard to overcome! But just like climate change, you can't control these social conditions, or at least you can't have much of an effect. But you can make a difference in your own life according to your own principles. Often times it just means being "less bad" instead of giving up.
Completely agree. I may nitpick a few of your responses, but I'm not saying that any of the factors I named make health impossible, only that it's exponentially more difficult because of the larger social context. And, similarly, I'm not saying the larger social context makes it impossible, but that it makes it _much_ harder than it needs to be for many people. (As evidence, I live in an area with very high obesity rates.)
I sort of knew when I posted that here, in particular, that the reaction would be to focus on the individual, because, well, HN. It's kind of a thing here. I'm also fascinated by the reaction that I must be fattie fat man who wants to make excuses and wait for others to fix my problem because I questioned whether mental fortitude is enough. The reality is that I was merely noting that there are larger contextual challenges that, taken together, make any individual's journey needlessly, inescapably harder than it should be.