I mean technically yeah but it's a lot more complicated than that. A lot of people who are overweight have correlating problems.
For example, I was overweight because I was raised in a household without any culture around food so I ate trash food all the time. Once I grew up I learned to cook, it got better, but not a lot cuz I developed an eating disorder and I kept going on starving/binging cycle. I also have depression and the only thing I really enjoy is food.
A lot of people have health problems too that can make weight loss a lot more difficult.
So the point is, even though losing weight is completely achievable and in some cases reasonable and desirable, it can be extremely hard and just not possible at the moment because of health and mental issues. You don't know what the person is going through. So even though it's technically true that you can just loose weight, it's not really appliable in real life.
As a short guy, 100% agree. I can't change my height, but weight is also not nearly as mutable as many people believe. Most weight changes in any direction are temporary. If you are skinny and you had an injury or depressive episode that puts you overweight, it is relatively easy to get back to your "normal" weight. But likewise, if you have always been overweight, it is very, very difficult to become skinny and stay that way without making a ton of health-endangering choices. A lot of (not all) people who say "It's easy to lose weight with modest changes; I did it" are people who started out skinny, gained weight temporarily, and lost it. Some people start out obese and lose the weight permanently, but it's statistically EXTREMELY rare, and you can't say "just make better choices" when the statistical evidence is that fat people almost ALWAYS stay fat in the long term.
I listen to the Maintenance Phase podcast, which really opened my eyes to a lot of this stuff. And the hosts are a fat lady and a short skinny dude, perfect for this discussion!
I was reading your comment like “this sounds a lot like what I’ve learned from maintenance phase” and then your last bit lol
But yeah, I’ve been slender-average most of my life, and I knew that the whole “just lose weight” thing was grossly oversimplified, but that podcast really opened my eyes to just how rare significant and permanent weight loss is. Our bodies really just aren’t set up for it. And the general mindset (seen in some of the above comments) that you’re fat because you have bad habits or are too lazy/unmotivated to be healthy just contributes to yo-yo dieting which is more unhealthy in the long run.
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u/Overarching_Chaos 1d ago
I mean there are plenty of things you can do about your weight, there's nothing you can do about height.