Giving up smoking was easy. Sorry if that sounds smug, but it was. The trick was not smoking every time I wanted to, until I didn’t anymore. A hundred, maybe a thousand small acts of will power.
However, for as long as I can remember, I have not been able to do that with overeating. And while food lacks the doomed glamour of other addictions, it has something the others don’t. Necessity. When I gave up smoking, I did not have to smoke 3 times a day. When I visit friends, they don’t put out bowls of cigarettes to welcome me.
In 2025, as I approach 50, I thought about whether my inability to manage my weight is destroying the planet. Let me explain. I’m caught in a state of puzzled rage at a society that has fetishised consumption. The desire for things that are so obnoxiously bad for the world. SUVs are my personal flashpoint. The sheer number of them is mind-bending. At a time when we should be using less fossil fuels, fuel use is going up. If there is a future, I imagine documentaries looking back at this era, asking: “How did they not see it? How did they choose this!” And they don’t even fit in car parking spaces!
But then at times I haven’t even fitted in airline seats. So who am I to judge?
I worry that the same things that drive me to the fridge at midnight drive others to credit agreements on cars the size of maisonettes. Both coping mechanisms in an increasingly alienating world; immediate individual comfort over long-term collective survival.
I worry that the same things that drive me to the fridge at midnight drive others to credit agreements on cars the size of maisonettes. Both coping mechanisms in an increasingly alienating world; immediate individual comfort over long-term collective survival.
I've spent years trying to identify my personal void. The chasm into which I tip the contents of the freezer aisle. Sometimes boredom, sometimes stress. But there's something else too.
Something that howls that it's hungry even when I’m not. And when it calls, it splits me. I can watch myself acting against my own long-term self-interest for short-term...what? Comfort? Numbing? The illusion of filling something that can never be filled?
The parallel makes me uncomfortable because I understand it all too well. Every person in an oversized SUV is me standing in front of an open fridge. We both know better. We're both doing it anyway. We're both filling holes that consumption itself makes bigger.
And, of course, there are industries built on this. The diet industry has profited from my yo-yo failures for decades. New plans, new products, new memberships each promising this time will be different. They make money when I fail because failure keeps me coming back.
The car industry is the same. Their profit is from pushing a different life enabled by an object.
Every person in an oversized SUV is me standing in front of an open fridge. We both know better. We're both doing it anyway. We're both filling holes that consumption itself makes bigger.
Why not buy something that makes you look sporty? Outdoorsy? Important? After all, you need extra room for all that sporting gear you also bought last year to fill the hole. Go on, let your neighbours know that you are leading a happy, active lifestyle.
I'm not saying we're blameless. I'm saying we're not in a fair fight. The supermarket pipes baking smells into the entrance. Our economy, and society is clinging to the notion that you can consume your way to fulfillment. And then we're told it's a personal responsibility problem, that we just need more willpower.
But I've been trying to make better choices for nearly 50 years. The volume of the crisis has been growing for my whole life. And yet we’re not able to reach the things that really fill those gaps. The things that help us feel that we are enough.
So what does it mean that I can see this parallel so clearly and still can't change?
As we near the end of 2025, I'm a little more compassionate toward myself, toward the person in the Range Rover, and toward humanity collectively shrugging at an increase of 2°C. We're not stupid or uncaring. We're just human; wired for immediate gratification and drowning in systems designed to exploit that wiring. Systems that tell us that just one, more, thing, will be enough.
But compassion doesn't solve it. The planet is still warming. We're still filling holes that consumption itself makes bigger. The system that promises to fill the void continues to create it. And maybe that's the most uncomfortable part; that understanding doesn't equal change. Knowledge doesn't equal action.
I know what I should do. Humanity knows what we should do. But knowing was never the hard part. Knowing that you are enough is.
We're not stupid or uncaring. We're just human; wired for immediate gratification and drowning in systems designed to exploit that wiring. Systems that tell us that just one, more, thing, will be enough.
So, in 2025, I thought a lot about whether my inability to manage my weight is destroying the planet. About how we're all addicts who can't quit what's killing us. And about the small daily choices we can't seem to make even when our lives depend on it.
I still haven't solved my weight problem. And watching me, you probably shouldn't bet on humanity solving climate change either.
But at least when I fail now, I understand it's not just me. It's us. All of us. Failing in the same human way.