This is the key point. Eating healthy is absolutely a good idea and helps you perform better but most people eat a lot more than they think they do.

When I started exercising I lost 50 pounds over a year and a half or so without a single change to my (absolute garbage) diet.

Saying you can work out 5x week and eat anything is idiotic, but the key to weight loss is to track your calories, not to eat healthier. You should eat healthier for other reasons.

The problem with carbs isn't that they are necessarily bad, but that the bulk of easily available food is mostly non-fibrous processed carbs, which leads to overeating, reduced nutrient density and less appetite satiety which makes overeating very easy.

Walk to any grocery store and most of any boxed food provide energy as carbs. At 2000 calories a day, that's a ~500g (4cal/g) budget for protein & carbs. 4x nutter butter packages burns through 1k+ calories, which I've seen family member teenagers do while junk fooding it up, then eating multiple 1k+ calorie meals. There's a ridiculous amount of inadvertent overeating that is occurring with the types of convenience foods available today.

Most naturally occurring carbs (rice, fruit, wheat, quinoa) are generally loaded up with fiber which satiate appetite, reduce insulin/sugar spikes, etc. Most people don't eat raw or minimally processed carbs through. It's generally consumed as soda, bread, chips/snacks, etc, + whichever meal is being consumed that day.

The body's metabolic process is pretty straightforward. Sugar is stored as glycogen in muscles & liver. Fat/Lipids are stored as fat in the presence of insulin. Protein is used for tissue regeneration and also converted into sugar through gluconeogenesis. Caloric excess means extraneous fat is stored, with an additional burden placed on the heart to support the additional blood flow to having more "body" (more capillaries), while caloric deficit leads to the consumption of the fat reserves.

People would be healthier in general by merely consuming higher nutrient density foods and staying at a proper caloric maintenance. Weighing food out for a week usually opens people eyes to the portions they are consuming. A serving of cereal seems okay at 120 calories, but in reality, a "bowl" is like 3-4 servings when actually measured out.

This is in Denmark, btw, probably one of the easiest countries to bike in.

I really don't know how to get people to start exercising.

The point is - should we? Why waste all those resources in subtly coercing, conditioning and deceiving responsible, adult people into wanting to have better lives? The situation will self-correct in a few decades all by itself, and there is too many of us on this planet anyway.

I have a colleague at work who is younger than me, almost morbidly obese. He is fully aware of it, he even cracks jokes about it. He is interested in reading all the theory in the world about anatomy, digestion, dieting, excercise, even chemistry, but he is too weak-willed to actually hop on that bike (which he bought last year, yet to my knowledge never used so far), or go for a walk. But he's already finished the new Mass Effect game and is up to speed with all the TV series out there. Every now and then, I suggest that he joins us when we go out on light bike trip, or swimming in nearby lake in summer, but he always makes one excuse or another.

Another colleague of mine is slightly older, and used to be almost as obese as the first one. About a year ago, he decided to start cycling to work, and also do some cycling in his free time. He changed a lot, is much more lean (or rather less "unlean", he still has ways to go), and by his own words, feels much better.

Both of them have made their choice, and are making it over and over again.

That said, I'm all for teaching kids good habits, they do not know any better, and it is our generation's task to impart wisdom (or something we consider wisdom, anyway) to the next one.