alt Hacker NewsSomething like 15% of the world lives in extreme poverty. This is darn near the best it's been in the history of the world (there used to be much more poverty by percentage), but this group would likely have trouble being fit. They might be skinny, but surely not fit.
Ignoring that extreme the questions maybe different: How many hours does a median person have free from work, commute, and sleep? How much time must be spent managing exercise and diet to achieve fitness?
I think if you took the time to answer those questions for the median or modal non-impoverished person in the world you might find that fitness is actually quite difficult to achieve.
It seems really hard in the US.
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I don't understand, impoverished people aren't taking Ozempic, either.
The work-life balance & climate in some areas of the US (and other areas of the world) does make it hard to exercise... but that's only part of the story.
Eating healthier requires very little extra time: perhaps 2-3 hours a week for shopping and meal prep.
- making a salad take 5 minutes.
- baking 10 meals worth of chicken takes 30-45 minutes, with about 5-10 minutes of actual prep time.
- baking a few meals worth of salmon, or some other fish is about the same as chicken.
- cutting up an apple takes 1-2 minutes. Bananas, peaches are ready to go, almost no prep required.
- steaming fresh broccoli takes 3-5 min of prep... and about 15-20 minutes total.
- Equally important is making small decisions to avoid or limit less healthy foods, which requires no time at all and often saves us money [that we can spend on healthier foods instead].
Exercising: 30-60 minutes a day, most days, is ideal but anything is better than nothing. A morning and evening 20 minute walk is great place to start (and can be so relaxing). If a person spends time on Hacker News, they could instead allocate that time to exercise. There are free 15 minutes yoga videos on Youtube. A set of push ups requires 60 seconds. Sometimes I do body weight squats at my desk at work (especially during Teams calls, camera off of course).
Sleep: get at least 7 hours of sleep a night... ideally starting to bed before 11pm. more sleep gives us more energy to put towards being awesome during the day and more energy for exercise and doing the extra work to eat better.
I think almost everyone can set aside 6-10 hours in their week towards building their health. It is a matter of priorities... a person's health should be one of their top priorities.