> When faced with the choices "be fat" or "exercise regularly and make good dietary choices to lose and keep weight off" most people choose "be fat". I think t

> When faced with the choices "be fat" or "exercise regularly and make good dietary choices to lose and keep weight off" most people choose "be fat". I think this is where education comes in, because when I was overweight I used to assume exercise had to be painful to be useful, and it really doesn't. Literally anything other than being 100% sedentary counts as meaningful exercise. It's okay to walk slowly with breaks, run slowly with breaks, walk in a pool where your weight is less of a factor, or whatever helps you. It's perfectly fine to exercise at a volume and intensity where you don't feel any pain at all, and "no pain no gain" is a disastrous lie. As you note, it's hard to make that kind of change twice. I think we do a disservice by discouraging people from exercising, rather than presenting it as an optional but beneficial extra. > Many of the people in my life are thin and completely sedentary, and they've never battled with their diet or weightloss. I'm sure you know some people like that too My (at the time new) boss once said "I bet you don't need to worry about this stuff [diet and exercise]" at a time when I was still eating 3000kJ under my TDEE, which was quite funny. But yes, I agree there really are some people who don't need to exercise to be skinny. The biggest problem I have is with hiding information from people. I agree that exercise isn't necessary or sufficient for weight loss, but I think on the margins exercise does help a considerable number of people succeed who would otherwise fail. That's why I don't like how most weight-related articles that end up on HN have something negative about exercise at the top of the comments.