If you want to see how the sugar tax works, look at the rollout, fallout, and repeal of the sugar tax in Chicago. It didn’t go so well.
It’s easy to call things common sense, but many of these arguments fall apart under closer inspection.
If you want to see how the sugar tax works, look at the rollout, fallout, and repeal of the sugar tax in Chicago. It didn’t go so well.
It’s easy to call things common sense, but many of these arguments fall apart under closer inspection.
I've not skated in seven months. My weight is stable thankfully because I spent 400 bucks buying a VR system and beat saber, not all my (mostly younger) skating fellows can afford that luxury. Running is out of the question, and gym at home is awfully boring.
Point is, do not just assume people will "find other ways to exercise". Sports centers should be considered health necessities, not recreational, in the context of the current pandemic.
Trust me I love exercise. I am a running nut. I do anything I can to help bike trails get made. But keeping skating rinks close to stop the spread of a pandemic seems pretty reasonable, and I would support it.
For comparison, swimming pools are open. Their showers aren't, though. Something about it not being safe, so instead people don't soap up before getting into the pool. It's gross, idiotic and all in the name of COVID.
There's a lot of these absurdities going on, it's pretty easy to find them if you look. It happens, of course.. but it is demoralizing. I'd invite you to consider how you would feel if your local government closed everywhere in the country where you could run. Closing off not just your sport, but your psychological break from the world. Your mental pillar.
Back in winter when the lakes froze, our equivalent of the parks service decided people skating outdoors, on lakes, was a COVID risk and forbade it. Even some of our official experts called it an absurd move.
And no, exercising less has had a pretty bad effect on my body, regardless of what I eat. My core and leg muscles are not doing well after 7 months not getting their daily routines on the ice, and I simply don't burn passively as much as I used to, despite doing what I can at home.
To be honest, as someone who struggled with weight most of my entire life and only got it under control after two decades thanks to those rinks, I find it pretty off-putting the way you're implying how simple it is to control weight. Maybe for you it is, but one look at obesity rates unveils the truth for most people.
Pull ups and some body weight exercise was the best I could do and honestly it wasn’t easy to keep going and I have found myself turning from a 6 day PPL to a couch potato especially during the 2nd lockdown.
I still run 5K 3-4 times a week and did a 10K run every other week but it wasn’t enough to prevent weight gain and muscle loss over nearly a year of interruption due to lockdown.
The biggest factor was also the lack of daily mobility I went down from 21K Aveo daily steps in 2019 to less than half of that in 2020 and early 2021.
You’ll be surprised just how much you lose from really only having to walk from the bed to your desk in the living room or spare bedroom for a year.
That's doubtful & I would need a report to substantiate this /s
Clearly any hurdle you put in front of people wanting to better themselves is going to reduce the number of people that successfully implement that change. It might not be significant (that would be up to statistics), but it's way more grounded in common sense than saying that hurdles don't affect people.