frostbiker

You are right, losing weight is really easy. And you will show those lazy fatties by losing 5Kg/10lbs this year.

Wait, did I hear any excuses?

Sure. Let's do an experiment. Try losing 5Kg/10lbs and maintain that weight loss for two years. Show us how rewarding it is to feel hungry after every meal.

but deep inside of us we still judge the heroin addicts for their choices

Speak for yourself. My father was an alcoholic and I don't judge him for that. I know the history of child abuse that led him to the bottle.

Furthermore, you could confuse hunger for appetite

A distinction without a difference: if you don't eat some more, you will suffer. In the long run, people eat until they are satisfied. Call it hunger, call it appetite, call it cravings, call it whatever you want. Stop eating too early -> suffer.

There is no limit to yearly increases in the real world. You get a phone call from your landlord telling you that they want to sell/renovate the unit, you get the hint and tell them that you will accept a rent increase, then magically they no longer want to sell/renovate. Happened to me with an otherwise "good" landlord.

But how many overweight people are just eating too much

How do you determine what is "too much"? If you measure it by weigh gain, then all of them are eating too much. But if you measure it by "they eat until they are satisfied and no more than that", probably most of them aren't eating too much.

and don‘t exercise a lot or at all?

That I suspect is very common. Then again, many modern jobs involve sitting all day and the day has a finite number of hours, and at least in North America cities are car-dependent so many people don't even get to commute by foot. It's an environment that produces very sedentary people.

There is also lack of sleep, which I personally suffer from. How many of us are getting a good eight hours of good quality sleep every night?

There is more to it than "personal responsibility".

A cheap bike would have made this a lot more bearable.

Hey, I'll be happy to maintain a civil conversation but I won't entertain rudeness. Have a great day!

Huh? Like I said, inflation increases demand for credit. Debt shrinks under inflation, so it becomes more compelling to take on debt in an inflationary environment.

Sorry, I must have misread it. I agree that nominal demand for credit increases under an inflationary environment, but only under the condition that interest rates stay constant. Which they don't, because central banks intervene. I hope we agree so far.

That is why interest rates rise alongside inflation

As I understand it, the interest rates of e.g. mortgages are (rather) indirectly set via the overnight lending rate of the BoC. In other words, mortgages rise because the BoC rated increased its rates. And that in turn happens because the BoC knows that increasing the cost of money lowers demand.

The effect of this intervention means that inflation-adjusted demand for credit today is lower than it was before the rate hikes started.

Same reason why, all else equal, the cost of bread increases when demand for bread increases. Basic supply and demand.

Credit is not a free market thanks to central banks. That is why they were created in the first place.

But if those interest costs are responsible for driving inflation, then you can find yourself in an interesting feedback loop where taking on debt remains compelling no matter how high rates go.

In theory, yes, that could happen. In practice, high enough interest rates asphixiate demand: people have less amount of money to spend on anything other than servicing their debt, causing unprofitable businesses to go under due to lower demand and their inability to access cheap credit, forcing businesses lay off their staff, which means that people stop being able to pay their mortgages, leading to foreclosures, and then a self-reinforcing slump of home prices.

This has happened many times before and it is happening now.

I suspect the whole "fat acceptance" movement arises from the overwhelming amount of judgement that fat people suffer, combined with the fact that until recently there was no practical treatment for it. It's the same process behind gay pride: it's not pride as in "I'm better than you", it is pride as in "I am not worse than you, no matter how badly you treat me".

Being overweight or obese is a medical condition, not a moral failure. If you can't fit in a normal chair, yes, you are morbidly obese, but that means you deserve more kindness, not less, just like we do with people who suffer a more severe form of cancer.

People who are fatter than you are not worse than you, they are sicker.

I used to judge overweight people. Now I understand that I was an asshole.

I have gained 25Kg in the past three years for no apparent reason. I eat the same kind of food, I exercise regularly... yet something is slightly off and my weight continues to slowly creep up.

People talk about calories in, calories out. What is missing from that argument is something as obvious as hunger: in the real world, over the long term, people eat until they are satisfied and no sooner than that. "Count your calories" means "Go hungry every meal". You can soldier on for a few months or a year, but eventually you will simply eat until you are no longer hungry.

If your hormones are slightly off and you feel a little too hungry for how much energy you actually need, you will slowly gain weight. Healthy people don't feel hungry every meal, that's simply not how they maintain a healthy weight.

That is why drugs like Wegovy are so important. They slightly adjust your sense of hunger so that it matches the amount of energy you actually need. Being overweight is in itself a chronic disease with all sorts of complications, from hypertension and diabetes to heart disease and joint problems. We need to stop judging people who suffer from it and start treating them now that we finally can.

I addressed that here.