> Getting out of the physical fat trap, strictly speaking, is simple: Develop basic sleep habits so that you get decent sleep. Exercise daily or almost daily. Reduce refined carbs, unhealthy fats and alcohol from your diet. Focus on getting enough vegetables, fruits, complex carbs and healthy fats.
Well... and that's the problem. It sounds easy on paper but in fact it is not easy at all in practice for the wide masses:
- work 8 hours, add 1h overtime and lunch, add 2 hours for commute, so out of the 24 hours a day, you already lose 11 hours to work related matters. Add 8 hours for a decent sleep time and whoops, only 5 hours remaining in the day for everything else: getting ready for work in the morning (0.5h), do chores (1h), make, eat and digest dinner (1.5h) have some quality time with your partner (1h) and children (1h), and whoops the entire day is gone before even considering anything actually relaxing, hobbies, or working out.
- shift work, particularly rotating shifts, or on-call work that's effectively being abused as regular overtime, makes developing healthy sleep patterns outright impossible.
- many people are outright unable to afford healthy groceries, which is why they're going for unhealthy highly processed food
- of those that are able to afford groceries, good luck getting them in one of the way too many food deserts
Our health issues (and the lack of children) to a very large degree tie back right into the expectation that people have to work 40 hours a week just to afford bare survival. That is the true trap - systemic forces leave the wide masses no other way.
Another trap I see in your list is wasting 3-4 hours for unpaid work:
- 2 hours commute daily? This seems crazy. Never had such a commute and most of my life I could walk or cycle to the university/work, so I gained some free exercise time.
- 1 hour overtime daily? What for?
- Lunch outside of work? (This is where my additional hour came from) Thankfully this never happened to me in my actual career.
This is the norm in many places of the world. I live in London and am lucky to only need to take one tube train into the office. It's still 1 hour each way - 10 mins to station, 5 mins wait - if i'm lucky, but it could be as much as 15, 45 min train, another 10 mins walk, 1hr each way is just a good smooth day for me. Many of my colleagues have even longer journeys. I only belabour this because I actually feel lucky in the length of my commute compared to many people in the UK.
As for 1hr overtime daily - if you're a salaried employee you aren't doing overtime to begin with, you're just doing your job - sure you can just not, but it probably won't go in your favour - at most agencies I've worked (this is in the UK) I was asked (i.e. required) as part of the onboarding to opt out of the working hours directive (https://www.gov.uk/maximum-weekly-working-hours/weekly-maxim...). There was no overtime, there was just work.
> This seems crazy. Never had such a commute and most of my life I could walk or cycle to the university/work, so I gained some free exercise time.
Good luck for you. Here in Munich, I have multiple colleagues who commute 1.5h single direction, I myself (since I can't afford rent in that fucking city, so gotta commute in from Landshut) have anything from 1 to 3 hours one way depending on how shitty the train service is on that day.
> - 1 hour overtime daily? What for?
I work in the creative industry. Thankfully we are a unionized shop which means we're not affected by that problem too much - but virtually everyone I know from other agencies that are not unionized is working easily 50 hour weeks. Every company in the industry has decimated staffing, much more than the incoming work fell, so everyone is working extra to not be the next whose head rolls.
> - Lunch outside of work? (This is where my additional hour came from) Thankfully this never happened to me in my actual career.
Germany has a mandatory 30 minute break by law during the day, in practice it's more like 45-60 minutes.
Well... and that's the problem. It sounds easy on paper but in fact it is not easy at all in practice for the wide masses:
- work 8 hours, add 1h overtime and lunch, add 2 hours for commute, so out of the 24 hours a day, you already lose 11 hours to work related matters. Add 8 hours for a decent sleep time and whoops, only 5 hours remaining in the day for everything else: getting ready for work in the morning (0.5h), do chores (1h), make, eat and digest dinner (1.5h) have some quality time with your partner (1h) and children (1h), and whoops the entire day is gone before even considering anything actually relaxing, hobbies, or working out.
- shift work, particularly rotating shifts, or on-call work that's effectively being abused as regular overtime, makes developing healthy sleep patterns outright impossible.
- many people are outright unable to afford healthy groceries, which is why they're going for unhealthy highly processed food
- of those that are able to afford groceries, good luck getting them in one of the way too many food deserts
Our health issues (and the lack of children) to a very large degree tie back right into the expectation that people have to work 40 hours a week just to afford bare survival. That is the true trap - systemic forces leave the wide masses no other way.