Should there be an obesity tax?

Yeah exercise burns less fat directly than many people think. Though there are knock on effects like the fact that even at rest muscle tissue burns over double the calories that fat tissue does.

But the effects of exercise on weight loss are - as you suspected in your post above - much more far reaching than merely the calories burned by the exercise or the resulting muscle tissue.

As you said - the people are engaging in something more meaningful and time consuming. So the time spent sitting around - where snacking might come into play - is reduced.

But there are other effects too. The positive endorphins of exercise can reduce anxiety and undermine the other things that make people seek "comfort" in food. Time invested in exercise has value people do not want to undermine with bad food so they are more motivated towards good food.

The pride and awareness that comes with setting physical goals and hitting them can positively impact peoples food choices. When you become someone who actively pursues exercise it can leave a more "positive self image" which is a motivator to allow the implications of that image to permeate other areas of our lives.

Setting aside time for exercise can have effects on routine - and routine can be a powerful promoter of eating and preparing food well - and counter impulse and convenience options. Anecdotally I have seen poor diets and eating habits correlate very heavily with no discipline or routine around eating.

Meanwhile the brain fog or low energy and motivation caused by bad food can keep people in a bad cycle of food choices. A fog that can be lifted by the positivity of exercise and help people break out of that bad cycle. When someone is in a bad cycle - there are often multiple places to break the chain.

And finally for some people - we find that when we ask more of our body it asks more of us. I find the harder I push my body the less inclined it is to crave crap food - and call for better. When I ask more of my body - it tends to crave better and more nutritious food.

Unfortunately the final sentence of your post here does not actually in any way describe what I have been saying, no. I never said anything remotely similar to that at all in fact. So there has been a communication mismatch somewhere in the conversation here which would be worth flagging and fixing.

The only thing I have been saying is that while having general conversations about a general population - we should be aware of the exceptions and try to account for them. What we should not do however is allow those exceptions to negatively impact that conversation or policy.

Nothing in that position is remotely similar in even the smallest way to saying "If something works for 50% it will automatically work for the other 50%". I am highlighting the fixation of other people to things like "underlying health issues" therefore - rather than as you put it - being fixated on them myself.

Let me use your own analogy as that might help. You said "Most people have a mobile. But not everyone". So because mobile penetration is so high we could for example have a useful conversation as a society about implementing a mobile based E-Voting system for our democracy. During that conversation we should absolutely say things like "But how do we account for and include people who have no Mobile?". What we absolutely should never say or even hint at is "There are some people without mobiles therefore this entire idea is a bad one".

In my experience - which is anecdotal of course so take it as such - whenever a conversation starts on a forum like this about obsesity and how losing weight is a healthy and good goal - someone will bring up things like those people with "underlying health issues". And rightly so. Those people need to be included. But it is how, why, and to what end they are being included I think we always need to invest some attention to and be hyper aware of.

To that end -

- this would be kinda what I am saying too. It is indeed important to see it from the side of people who have for whatever reason or reasons an issue with pursuing such goals. But if those reasons are statistical outliers we should absolutely acknowledge them and account for them - but not in a way that impinges our ability to have a general conversation about general ideas and policy over a general population.

In other words I think both conversations can and should be had - without any negative impact on each other. They are not mutually exclusive.

I suspect the motivation of people who make posts and threads like the OP - comes more because of those as you put it who "are those who can't be bothered".

While I might not share the OPs opinions and motivations and positions on this topic I can at least understand where they may be coming from when they are paying ever increasing medical insurance payments and the like in a society where there exists some number of people who take absolutely no ownership of their own health and then simply create a burden on that medical system.

I am not the OP and do not at all have the same bee in my bonnet on the subject - but I can at least empathize with the head space they are likely coming from.

I absolutely refuse to evangelize healthy living or healthy diets or preach to people on those topics. I do however try to represent those lifestyles well and example them well. I talk about my personal choices and the positive effects they have had on me. And I do it often. But never in a "therefore you should do it too" kind of way.

If people look at me - and many in my social circles have - and come to me openly asking me about it then I am happy to advise and guide. But I have no interest in preaching at people - or taxing them like the OP suggests!

Like you I am quite wary of the sweeping statements of "It is easy to lose weight" though. It very often isn't even without underlying conditions. In fact I recently was reading studies which suggest that if you lose 10kg - then put that 10kg on again - and then try to lose it again - it actually takes much more effort the second time around. It seemingly literally becomes more difficult to lose weight that you had previously lost and then regained. I never followed up on reading those studies to see if they were replicated. But if true it is certainly something we should be aware of before preaching at people that it is all so easy!

And sometimes weight loss makes no sense. It certainly can be more nuanced than the people who reduce it to little more than "Calories in - Calories out". For example anecdotally I had a friend who had serious trouble losing weight and tried all kinds of diets. After many failures with nothing working he came to me. I looked at his diet and changed nothing except _ when _ he was eating the things he was eating. He was essentially eating the same types of things but at different times of the day. I moved for example his most carb heavy meals to early breakfast rather than late dinner. And I compressed the time window during which he was eating (essentially a 16 hour fasting structure). And the weight fell off him.

No change in calorie intake. No increase or decrease. But yet the impact on his weight was significant. It makes no sense to me or to him. We just know it worked.

As Flinty rightly says - if it was easy everyone would be doing it. Often it is not easy. And sometimes, like above, its a complete bloody mystery.