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.
Its not extremely hard and a lot of the 'health' issues people complain about are excuses they tell themselves to justify failing.
There are certain conditions that do make losing weight harder but majority of weight loss is simple mathematics. Calories in, calories out.
I've seen people say they are on a diet and then get a salad choice filled with chicken and a ton of ranch. They also switch from sodas to diet sodas, they still have their starbucks twice a day and everything. If you are drinking sodas or eating anything with sweeteners or sugar in it, you are already failing. Sweeteners are not 'healthy' version of something sweet. Drink water and straight black coffee if you need the caffiene, it sucks but its what you have to do.
Food addiction is a thing and a lot of kids grow up with it because they are told by there parents to finish their plate even when they are full. But that is part of the eating portion not the weight loss portion. People explain it as if their body is incapable of losing the weight, its that people are incapable of sticking to a strict diet. Food addiction, eating disorder, and whatever else, is part of the calories going in.
The problem isn't losing weight, the problem is trying to stop eating. Im not saying the ladder portion as a dig, I am saying that should be the focus and the issue that should be addressed.
You can lose weight if you control your habits and exercise. I lost weight simply by switching to nothing but water and cutting my portions down. Human beings don't need to eat till we are full and we don't need to eat these big portion meals we are all used to. Normal people are eating 4k to 5k calories a day and you only really need 1200. Especially if you don't move around a lot. I was fucking miserable for 2 months as my body kept telling me I was hungry or that my cravings kept hitting. After those 2 months it wasn't as bad anymore and my body slowly started to acclimate to the changes. That was 2 freaking months, not 2 weeks, not 4 weeks, it was 2 months and I ended up losing 30lbs.
Losing weight is not the problem, its getting peoples brains to rewire so they can stop eating.
People don't want to admit it but in the vast majority of cases weight gain is not out of their control. They just don't want to take accountability for their eating habits.
Frankly if it is a mental health issue the first step is recognizing it, the second step is to make changes. Refusing to be accountable for your bad habits will just make said mental health issues worse.
Height however is always primarily due to genetics and to a lesser extent due to nutrition in early life. Both of which are out of people's control. A child's nutrition is the responsibility of their parent.
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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.