> The point is that overeating won’t make us happy either. Maybe it will give some 15 seconds of gratification but then most of us will feel guilt, and the long term effect has terrible consequences.
I don't deny that. Some get unhappy enough to derive enough energy from this unhappiness to tackle this as a real problem. Of course the first box you need to tick to get better is to accept your behaviour is problematic and realize that it makes you unhappy in the long term.
Some might never reach that step to begin with. Many however realize the problems and want to get better but they can't because they constantly fight the symptoms and not the cause, or because their lives give them enough excuses not to do it (whether they are valid excuses or not doesn't matter too much).
I chose to believe that people are a product of both their environments and their own choices. So we are neither completely determined by the circumstances we grew up in nor are we completely free to decide to "just" do things 180° different than we were lead to believe our whole lives. We can shape our environments and ourselves within certain boundaries and over given timescales, but for this we need to know the forces which act upon us. And everybody has forces acting upon them, the believes, rationalizations and stories we tell ourselves about our place in the world are partly a product of this: we try to be happy with ourselves in the place that we have within the universe. We try to establish meaning in the chaos.
This is why explainations like "some people are just lazy" is less of a true statement about the world, but more of a true statement about the stories a certain type of person has to tell themselves in order to feel good. Because if the weren't "just lazy" suddenly one had to reflect upon the environment, the incentive structures that shaped them into the way they are. Suddenly one would feel the ethical need to change said environment and feel powerless confronted with the scale of the problem. Nah. Moar better to say they are "just lazy", then one can stop thinking.