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.