Right, just like I wasn't able to quit smoking after a 25-cigarette a day habit over 10 years ago and haven't looked back? Or how no one is ever able to keep weight off? Or get off heroin? Or change their lifestyle?

Maybe ask: "What are you doing to try to ensure you'll keep your kids off screens and active?"

Or

"Do you have any experience trying to give up addictive behaviors, and how are you helping your child deal with it?"

Snarky comments, especially those that involve assumptions ("you're using willpower") just make you come off as 1- a person who has never accomplished anything of note and isn't worth paying attention to, and 2- a naval gazer with neither the curiosity nor intelligence on how to approach discovery.

Learn how to be inquisitive, then you can be judgemental

sorry my comment wasn't directed at you( i was using generic you) specifically. I was just comparing it to dieting using willpower as the means.

Doesn't apply to 100% of people, you obviously had good success with it.

I used to be 220lbs and winded going up steps. Now I'm 180lbs and weightlifting and running, going on 7 years.

Not all diets fail. Willpower is the way.

>all diets fail after six months on average; ppl regain even more weight

This is not true and is also potentially harmful if people believe it. In reality, weight regain after "cutting" occurs over a period of years and tends to be around 50%; that is, less than the amount of weight lost in the first place. Several meta-analyses have been conducted, e.g.:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240545772...

It's also worth noting that adults under 60 tend to gain weight over time on average, so the actual effect of the intervention versus no intervention may be underestimated by simply treating the baseline as a constant. Losing ten pounds may seem small, but losing ten pounds instead of gaining ten pounds is more significant.

> In reality, weight regain after "cutting" occurs over a period of years and tends to be around 50%; that is, less than the amount of weight lost in the first place.

Interesting. Perhaps I missed it, I am not seeing that claim in the link you posted in the comment.

It's shown most prominently in in Figure 4, which tracks post-weight-loss outcomes to 160 weeks (about three years). Sorry if it's not showing, I'm afraid sometimes I'm not sure what's open access anymore, since the journals have all done their best to make institutional logins automatic and invisible.

Practically all studies and reviews on the topic emphasize the large individual variability in outcomes. One in six Americans who has ever been overweight or obese loses at least 10 kilograms and keeps it off for at least a year, for example:

https://www.nature.com/articles/ijo201094

That study tracks a sample of adults in the general population, not a group assigned to diet. But evidently a significant fraction of people find success on their own. Most studies on the subject emphasizes substantial individual variability. Furthermore, a strong predictor of long-term weight-loss maintenance is just the initial weight lost:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ijcp.12300

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/74/5/579/4737391

and another one is self-monitoring:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.2147/CIA.S25389

In another study, around 30% did not experience significant regain:

https://bpsmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1303...

The notion that "all diets fail" seems to be perpetuated by a few unscrupulous journalists seeking clicks and social media slacktivists doing the same. It's not true, it's not helpful, and it's not defensible.