Population wide obesity&inactivity is more than about "choices" because even those who want to choose the right thing r forced not to
Walking or cycling for daily life is made difficult if not impossible due to catering to motor traffic, in many buildings https://twitter.com/Hormetik/status/1384266503017562120

the stairs r often placed so that u have to search or they r off limits while the elevator welcomes u prominently

Obesity was low in the past not because every1 was hitting the gym & following the latest diet fad but because movement was part of daily life.

Amish men on avg

walked 18,000 steps/day, women 14,000+, avg American walks a third of that if lucky. It isn't because Amish r all fitness freaks walking on a treadmill but due to eschewing a good deal of modern tech (& running profitable farms without gov't subsidies coincidentally) they have to

This whole business of photo ops "fitness" by politicians & speeches about making the right "choices" is another scam to escape responsibility for things like lack of pedestrian & cycling infra.

Of course the gym industry likes it, not a coincidence that it took off right around

the time when physical inactivity became central to life

If u want to get back to having a healthy population, exhorting them to play sports, join gyms etc is not a scalable solution. We know that because it's been going on for decades now with 0 results

Scalable solutions r these:

Cycling to school; Culemborg (Netherlands)
Hundreds of thousands of children cycle to school every morning in the Netherlands. Kids cycling up to 15km one way are no exception.

Another & even healthier scalable solution than cycling:

We analyzed the Japan’s walking-to-school practice implemented in 1953 for lessons useful to other cities and countries.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477970/

Walking to School System in Japan

Another scalable solution common to almost all Japanese schools:

https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon/status/1368852497754771458

Of course the main point is for kids to learn to keep their surroundings clean but an additional benefit is the physical exertion involved in all that cleaning

The Miracle Pill
Peter Walker
2021

The highest individual one-day total was 51,514 steps, more than 20 miles, recorded by an Amish man who was harrowing farmland... In such a world the idea of ‘exercise’ seems redundant.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Miracle_Pill/_VffDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=When+the+results+arrived,+they+were+striking.+Separate+surveys+have+calculated&pg=PT12&printsec=frontcover

Larry Frank: New research on the health impacts of land use and transportation