Like: car dependent suburbia. If you don't grow up walking to the shops with your parents, walking to the park to play, walking to school, cycling to school, walking or cycling to work; if your only exposure to movement is mandatory exercise at school which is unpleasant, what does that do to your lifelong views? If your environment doesn't have anywhere interesting to walk to, or any sidewalk to walk on, what does that do?
Like: If your parents and family never moved except to get to the car, what kind of early mental expectations does that set you up with? Children try to imitate their parents, if the parents alway groan and complain about having to walk anywhere, that's some kind of lesson.
Like: Livestrong.com says "The average restaurant meal is four times larger than it was in the 1950s. Similarly, the size of American-manufactured dinner plates has increased nearly 23 percent, from 9.6 inch". If you habitually eat out at restaurants and they gradually feed you more, more sugary, food, but you still have the "clean your plate to be polite" mentality, what does that do?
Like: where did this idea of "healthy food" come from? "Health" isn't something in food.
Like: where did the idea that cooking is "a real chore" come from? Can't one grow up to find preparing food a relaxing joy, an interest, an everyday part of life? Or learn to spend less time on it, e.g. meal prepping?
Like: "I tend to overeat when I encounter stress in life" - Where does that behaviour come from? That's learned from somewhere, it isn't innate to cavepeople to have food on hand just in case life gets stressful, it's likely some family or community cultural habit where others might not do that.
I think it was Paul Lutus in a Reddit AMA, someone asked him if he baked much when living in a cabin in the woods, and he said he found it difficult to resist eating baked goods so he just didn't make them or buy them. That kind of discipline is much easier than buying them, having them nearby, and trying to resist eating them every moment forever.
> "Sure but if I could have changed it I would have."
Perhaps you can't, there are suggestions that becoming obese screws up your body forever, so it burns less fat (e.g. prefering quicker feeling of tiredness to reduce movement, rather than breaking the laws of thermodynamics), holds onto fat more strongly, distorts feelings of hunger and satiety and food cravings. UK comedian Ed Gamble who lost a lot of weight jokingly commented about thin people "if you don't think about food, what are you thinking about literally all the time?". It's possible that wasn't joking and years of obsessively thinking about food engrained that as a pattern he will be stuck with for the rest of his life, when always-thin people can forget about food when thinking about other things.
>[...]
>Like: car dependent suburbia
It seems weird to blame car dependent suburbia for the rise from 1950. Did "car dependent suburbia" really get worse compared to 1950? Given urbanization trends, you'd think that car dependence actually went down compared 1950.
Pew Research[2] says suburbs have grown 6.4 million people by migration from cities and rural populations between 2000 and 2018. Ten fastest growing communities in America in 2021 are suburbs[5].
Car companies made and sold about 58 million cars in the USA in the 1950s decade[3].
Eisenhower's interstate highway act was 1956, and miles of highway has increased by hundreds of thousands since 1990[4].
[0] https://www.insider.com/vintage-photos-levittown-suburbs-50s... and https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/demogra...
[1] https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter8/urban-trans...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/02/5-facts-abo...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_automobile_industry_i...
[4] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183397/united-states-hig...
[5] https://legallysociable.com/2021/09/19/the-ten-fastest-growi...
Imagine if you only learned from the experience that you need more revenue sooner instead of using the most fun tech, but you hadn't had it beaten into you that it was YOUR FAULT, that would be ... unfair, right? We'd all be missing an opportunity to put you in your place which you clearly deserve by circular reasoning of being at fault.
Plus it makes us feel better because if it's your fault, that means you weren't crushed by enormous imbalanced forces so that won't happen to us. If nobody can resist the $4Bn/year CocaCola advertising spend on every media platform going, maybe I can't either. But if you're just weak, then I maybe can.
For me being obese is not really a choice. It's just really hard to do anything about it, especially because I tend to overeat when I encounter stress in life. And I'm not wired with the discipline to fix it. I often go on diets but they never last.
Also, living alone cooking is a real chore and there's not enough ready made healthy food.
And in terms of exercise I really hate team sports and mindless weight lifting. I do hike a bit though when the season permits.
Are these excuses? Sure but if I could have changed it I would have.