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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29954 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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Here for a good time, not a long time. I'll take my extra spare time now, and not worry about losing a couple of years of gently shitting myself between bingo rounds in Shady Orchards retirement home.

There are plenty of obese people dead of a heart attack decades before reaching retirement. I suspect that most of them were not having a particularly "good time" in the years prior to their death either.

As ever, "exercise addict" or "morbid obesity" are not the only two options in the world.

Agreed. But I hope you would at least concede the point that people who never exercise are orders of magnitude more likely to end up morbidly obese than avid exercisers, or even people who get 2-3 hours of moderate exercise a week.

Probably, yes. Orders of magnitude might be overstating it a bit. I'm just saying it's not inconceivable that you can look after yourself without deliberately setting aside time to exercise. I just walk to the local shops when convenient, play interesting VR games occasionally, and otherwise try to keep myself too busy to feel too hungry. Overeating is a symptom of boredom, I find.

I see what you're driving at. This obviously isn't a new point, but probably bears repeating. Our bodies evolved under the assumption that we would lead physically demanding lives filled with vigorous exercise. Even after the industrial revolution, up to about a hundred years ago the average lifestyle was so physically labour-intensive that there was no need to set aside time to exercise. It's only in the past few decades that mechanisation has progressed to the point at which physically demanding jobs are the exception rather than the rule and it's become possible to live a truly sedentary lifestyle: it's only under these circumstances that deliberately setting aside time for exercise has become a necessity if you want to get any exercise at all (unless you cycle to work). I'm not saying it's impossible to live a largely healthy life while getting effectively no exercise, but it would be very surprising, in light of the fact that our bodies evolved to exercise frequently and vigorously. It's even more extraordinary a claim than certain vegans' claims that they are even more fit and strong than meat-eaters, in light of the fact that our bodies evolved to eat meat (leaving aside any question of the morality of doing so).

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