Seems to be one of those plainly obvious things. Probably valuable in a scientific sense as a factual basis for other research (in which you should never just guess things) but for the public… well duh?
The favored route is chemistry, cellular, genetic factors.
"In order to lose weight, should you eat more of:
- Candy or Fruit?
- Soda or Water?
- Big Mac or Chicken Breast?
- Hot Pockets or a Salad?
- Fried Chicken or Grilled Chicken?
etc...
It's honestly so insulting when people say that people are unhealthy do to a lack of information. Not only is common sense enough to navigate you 80% there, the rest is a YouTube video away.
Secondly I vaguely recall the shift as a university student routinely eating take away to cooking for myself, it's not a trivial step, you have to pickup habits around shopping, meal planning and cooking. There's a lot of steps someone who's not used to doing it can drop off on.
So yes, I can believe that people both know what are healthier options, but have no idea how to actually practically execute them in their life. It is deeply unhelpful to give people advice that they can't action and then expect them to thank you for it.
This narrative is an excuse for a lack of discipline and accountability at best.
In fact, I don’t know if physical exercise is actually taught correctly by any single person. Each teacher may help you in one way and (sometimes physically) hurt you in another. The only way to prevent that is to become an expert yourself.
I’ve read about three books worth of information about weight lifting, stretching, massage. I’ve been to several massage therapists and physical therapists. I’ve had a personal trainer. I’ve consistently practiced being active, and even did sports when I was growing up. Despite all that, I still haven’t reached my simple fitness goal of not having muscular pain.
Physical inactivity can be caused by injury. In that situation, both activity and inactivity can have serious negative consequences. Navigating someone of a situation like that isn’t something many health professionals are capable of doing, let alone random people.
I’m 28, maybe you are still 22 and don’t know what the consequences of your training on an aging body are yet. Or maybe your legs aren’t uneven sized (as many peoples are) and you don’t have to deal with the consequences of that.
As far as discipline and accountability can be solution to adress those issue, they also reinforce guilt and shame for all those struggling and failing on this path to solve their issue.
And often is used as a survivor biais self glorification.
Most if not all of your behaviour are directly or indirectly tied to your environment, and feedback from your environment.
I myself struggled 30years being overweight, obese and ultra sedentary.
Adopting a dog in my home, had more impact on all those issues than all coach/doctor/ and self discipline and accountability.
The dog was a major cause of perturbation forcing me to adoption of new patterns and frame of decision.
Most healthy and shape peoples are the one lucky enough to have been living in a very positive environment which they inherited.
Mimétism is the most important way of transmitting behaviour pattern (and emotional reaction). Once you understand that, you can reshape your environment to improve, adapt the mimetic feedback to yourself.