I'll praise them for improving themselves when it becomes socially acceptable to deride them for harming themselves.  It should go both ways!  Why praise someone for doing something they're already supposed to do?

"Good job, Billy!  You didn't shit all over yourself!" 

No.  Billy shouldn't shit on himself in the first place.

LMAO

OT: I gained a bit of weight after highschool went from 180 to 225 and it showed and for the past year and a half i ate healthier and excercised and im back to 180 and honestly i should not have been praised for the losing the weight and it never crossed my mind that peopl might say things about it. It's honestly should be more of a personal thing, but I just felt like i was getting back to where i should have been anyway. 

Everyone loves the underdog. Let's say a boy now a man who's in his mid 20's gets fat over the years due to a typical american diet. He realizes all that's he's losing with all this weight gets a really good body in 2 years...that's pretty great man that's like defining what people originally envisioned you as therefore becoming nothing short of a legend

I should be praised for being cavity free, but only little kids get on the "Cavity Free" wall at my dentist. Being over thirty and cavity free is, apparently, meaningless.

Not sure why we should have to explain this, but we praise people for working hard to try and change their lives.

So, let's say you have a friend who is overweight to the point where it is severely detrimental to his health. You notice he's been trying really hard to eat right and exercise, and he's been losing weight. So, being a good friend, you congratulate him on his progress. You do this so that your friend will feel good about his effort and will be motivated to keep working at it to improve his health.

Now, on the other hand, you can say to your friend, "hey you've lost some weight... But you still shouldn't have eaten all those damn fries like the fat fucking piece of shit you were. You still need to lose like 60 pounds you fat fatty fat fat fuck". This would likely discourage the person and decrease the chance of them successfully losing weight. It would also just be a dick move in general.

So we praise people who lose weight to encourage and support them, and to be nice. Same way we would congratulate a person who is working hard to stay sober because we want to help them stay sober. We also do this out of empathy to show people that we understand that this may be hard for them, even if it may not be hard for us.
We don't tend to praise people who stay in shape in general because they don't need it. Telling a person who's never done heroin "hey good job not doing heroin!" really isn't going to impact them in anyway.

Pretty simple really.

Same reason we praise those who can eat 5 pizzas in 15 mins.



It's impressive.

People like the story of of working your way up to your goals and achieving them. Its why "The Biggest Loser" is such a huge hit with people. They take people who are morbidly obese and help them lose hundreds of pounds so they can live a healthy life. Its why Jared has become the spokes person for eating healthy at Subway and became a millionaire. He stopped eating crap and ate healthier sandwiches while losing weight.

People are becoming aware that heart disease is one of the biggest killers of human beings in the US. By losing weight they increase their chances greatly of survival.

It's extremely difficult to lose a lot of weight. To overcome the desire to eat instead of read, exercise, watch TV, etc. It's less difficult to simply maintain your weight at a certain level.

That is the answer to your question.

Because redemption is more beautiful and inspiring than someone who has had it together his/her whole life.

We like seeing it be possible to change our destiny, to improve ourselves from before, and to see that we don't have to be the way we are.

Also, prodigal son story.

It's the only good America does.