If taxing needs to be done, it certainly shouldn’t be simply on people who are (categorized according to whomever) fat, nor on a ‘per calorie’ basis. The fact of the matter is that eating a diet for healthy weight loss IS difficult for many people. ultrafilter, you may believe that every person who is overweight is that way simply because they refuse to stop “sitting on [their] ass[es] all day long and eating crap”, but it’s not quite as simple as that.
“Crap”, as you so ineptly put it, is difficult to always quantify, especially for people who are weight-gain prone. (Yes, it may be possible for you to easily maintain a certain weight no matter what you eat. Certain people are blessed with that ability.) Virtually any food can fit within a healthy or unhealthy diet, and a lot of people – myself included – have a hard time understanding what constitutes healthy. I am a reasonably intelligent person, but because of a lifetime of various diets and methods, I really hadn’t a clue what I should be eating. For a long time, my expectations were unrealistically high, and this caused me to fail many times. (Also, most weight-loss sites do not take into account vegetarianism, something which I am unwilling to give up. When I went to a nutritionist, she flatly told me that she had no idea what I should eat and told me that the only way she could help me was if I started eating meat. I am still looking.)
Economics is a huge issue. I know that the hardest time I have with losing weight is simply the financial expense. Low-cost foods are often nutrient poor, causing cravings that, in turn, cause overeating. Low-calorie or ‘diet’ foods, as well as fresh fruits and vegetables, are also costly. Check at the grocery store – low fat, or whole-grain, or otherwise healthy versions will nearly always cost more.
Exercise is, additionally, more difficult than it sounds. If you are working a lot, or working more than one job, or a student who is working, you do not have so much time to exercise. Walking is free, but most of the country experiences unseasonable weather. Gym memberships are quite expensive and out of reach for many people. An “active lifestyle” is difficult when most people are at jobs all day long that are sedentary!
Support groups and education, too, are expensive. I have been looking into Weight Watchers as my mother has found it very effective. Do you realize how costly it is? I believe it is something like $80 for ten weeks, and that’s just the cost of meetings and the starting packet – not any food or anything. I’m finally at the point where I can afford this expense and I hope it will help me.
If we want obesity to decrease and we want to use the government to do so, then we should make healthy options more available and affordable. Workplaces could be given tax incentives to provide healthy foods at their cafeterias and exercise rooms for their employees to use. A healthy, balanced diet should not be a large financial sacrifice. We could have funding for education on balanced diets and methods for responsible wait loss, particularly around the holidays. We have a culture that loves food and loves to overeat.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to lose weight on very little funds. People do succeed against all sorts of challenges. However, all of the things I mentioned make things difficult. I know I have struggled this for all of my life, even when I was too young to understand, nor to make intelligent choices for myself. (I was overweight even as an infant and placed on my first diet before I could even walk.) Genetics, culture, economics, and all other sorts of causes complicate the matter far more than just being an issue of willpower, ultrafilter.
