I did a lot of things, but all of them required a massive amount of sustained effort. I like that I can order the food I want to eat at a restaurant without looking up all the calories before I go. I like that I can just live my life without food thoughts taking up 60% of my brain space at any given time.
For some people, diet and lifestyle changes help control blood pressure. Other people need to take meds for the rest of their lives, anyway. We don't shame them for it.
I understand calorie balance. I've been on a diet since I was 12 years old, and am now approaching 50. I've lost and regained the same 60lbs about 4 times now. I have logged every bite that goes into my mouth, and lived with a constant hunger for as long as I could take it. Then I ate until I felt satisfied and gained it all back. I know how many calories are in anything, and I can eyeball any serving size. I've been doing it for decades. When I take GLP-1s, I can just stop. My appetite and body maintains itself at a healthy weight, and I don't cry myself to sleep from either hunger or shame.
This is exactly how I learned to program. My brothers only liked playing the games, but I preferred making my own (generally based on source code listings in the back of BYTE magazine).
My brother underwent this surgery, and not only did the weight come back, he developed a serious drinking problem (he's in recovery now). Apparently, this a known side effect. All it really did was make his life much harder in the long run. Hunger is more that the physical feeling of fullness.
GoFundMe tells a lot of people who they can or cannot send money to via their platform. First, there are laws around sending money to designated terrorist organizations, then there are restrictions around violence, pornography and sex work, and many more. The giant list can be found here: https://www.gofundme.com/c/terms
If you want to mail a check to these truckers, have at it, but GoFundMe is not obligated to collect money on their behalf. Here's another example, but not one Ron Desantis would ever care about - https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200131-gofundme-shuts-us...
This is whataboutism; you have no proof that people who care about one thing don't also care about other things. Also, calling people you disagree with "woke" and claiming they "virtue climb" (what does that even mean??) is intellectually lazy.
What? You can't say "call me they/them," rather you can only say "don't call me him/her/or any other pronoun besides they"? That's very silly.
Clarification of rules, even to the point where they may seem redundant, is completely fine and often important. This is such a weird hill for them to die on.
You can crunch fake, sort-of-made-up numbers all day. The average man doesn't exist. My point is that it's certainly possible to be living paycheck-to-paycheck in a city with what was once a decent salary, even if you aren't blowing all your money on frivolous stuff.
Even that is only important a little bit. Excelling at a mid-tier university is completely FINE. It's so much harder to get into an Ivy League school now than when I was applying in the 90s; I'm not pushing my child to the brink for a tiny blink of undergrad prestige.
My son is a junior now in a very competitive high school, and they had to do away with valedictorian/salutatorian because the difference between that and, say, just top 5% would be a 99.6 vs a 99.4 in one class in the 10th grade. It was so stressful for these kids, like it even fucking matters long term.