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Comment by jrq | Hacker News Reader

You know what? Honestly? A person who has made that 3-job and 8-kid decision in their life has deliberately compromised their own health.

It's not the fault of the world that they made a bad call and sacrificed the time they could have used to stay healthy.

Consumers need to be more responsible and skeptical about the choices advertisers want them to make. Don't have so many kids, stay healthy first and foremost, don't develop bad spending habits, do develop good savings habits, and use your job as a vessel to forward your career, and not your paycheck.

If you don't have enough time to maintain your health, you have put your own self in that position, some way, somehow.

Not you, obviously, but just in general.

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> Consumers need to be more responsible and skeptical about the choices advertisers want them to make. Don't have so many kids, stay healthy first and foremost, don't develop bad spending habits, do develop good savings habits, and use your job as a vessel to forward your career, and not your paycheck.

You're speaking from a position of privilege in time, money and access. Many people start out life with involuntary handicaps, physical ailments and hell, just shitty luck. It's very easy to criticize people who made one or two bad decisions (or had bad things happen) early on and have to deal with it.

I've seen people in the gym three or four times a week that couldn't walk and did upper body exercise. I've seen elderly people with arthritis do water aerobics, my own grandfather with diabetes had his leg amputated and was active until in the field taking care of his cows until he passed.

Heck, I have cerebral palsy (mostly affects my left hand and to a lesser extent my left foot) but I was a part time fitness instructor for 12 years, ran 5K - 15Ks. and even now I work out 5 - 8 hours a week.

In other words do what you can with in your limits. If you have kids that can walk, take them walking with you. Make them part of your activity.

I'm speaking from three years of homelessness after being independent and nearly homeless at 17 and recovering from several years of alcohol abuse.

Don't assume, because it only confirms that you don't know what you're talking about.

Even through all of that, I found time to exercise. Even when I was a drunk, hell I still jogged now and then.

I'm not saying bad things don't happen, I'm saying having three jobs and eight kids isn't "a bad thing happened"

Right. The lack of good educational resources, poverty, structural imbalances, staggering income inequality, a government that deliberately makes access to contraception hard - all these are clearly deliberate choices to not stay healthy.

Maybe that answer is people instead discovering that there's a trait called empathy. That luck and circumstances shape most of our lives. That ignoring that makes you into a horrible human being who's entirely self-centered.

Not you, obviously, but just in general.

Yes there are structural problems. During the height of the recession, the local Y that I taught fitness classes at posted signs telling people that if they couldn't afford their fees just let them know and they would waive their fees. The Y also has child care.

Like I told the other moron, I was homeless, on my own early, and an alcoholic. You're making excuses for people that aren't proactive. I'm not disparaging the poor, I was poor for the majaority of my life, I'm disparaging the poor choices people make to stay there.

My mother to this day is an oxycodone addict. My dad is somewhere out there, maybe, I don't know. I didn't let those factors dictate my life. And once I learned how to make better choices, I stopped being homeless, went through a rehab, and got my career together. It was hard, but it was a hard choice I made, for myself.

You don't know who I am because of an opinion your reactionary, careless ass misread on the Internet.

Get a grip.

Hey! You're welcome here. It's good to hear from people who have this kind of firsthand experience. I value it deeply, and I believe the community does too. But we need you to follow the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

It can be annoying to run into comments that seem to deny what you know from experience, give advice you don't need, and so on. But you can't respond by insulting people and calling names (e.g. "moron", " reactionary, careless ass"). It doesn't matter how right you are; being right makes it worse, because it prevents people from hearing what you have to say. So would you please the rules and follow them when posting here?

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