h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Having close and dear friends who are obese, I find myself worrying about their health and wondering whether there is anything I can do to encourage and nudge them gently in the direction of a healthier lifestyle. The same applies to friends who are still smokers. Generally speaking, the very last thing these people need is to be put down and judged for their self-destructive behavior. At the same time, however, it is difficult and painful to sit by idly and watch a good friend, in essence, gradually committing suicide before your eyes. I suppose that in the final analysis it is, after all, their life, not mine. Perhaps it's purely selfishness and willfulness on my part to wish that they would somehow subscribe to my view of how they might better conduct their lives. Fitness and longevity, after all, are not the only things, and almost certainly not the most important things, in life.

Well, I think one partial solution is the combination of diet and exercize. Take a lookat what I said about fish oils plus moderate amounts of exercize

Yes, it's a worldwide problem. I wonder why and I wonder where it started. But I don't suppose the opening of the new Coca-Cola factory in Kabul (for example) will destroy the next 2 or 3 generations' metabolisms ... will it ?
Last I heard it was 7 spoons of sugar to the can.

Hi, I'm obese. I can understand people worrying about overweight people committing suicide but that isn't my plan. Just as with many smokers the first thing they want to do if you talk to them about giving up is to go outside and light up. One of the big problems for big people in exercising is that when you get to be big people look, i.e. stare at you - especially when you wear sports clothes! This makes people more self conscious and those of us who eat for comfort are driven to food.

Very, very few (maybe less than 5%) of people who lose weight can keep it off.

One of the calculations I would be interested in seeing is how much I have to eat to maintain my current weight. Do I have to really work at it or is it easy? If I dropped a few dozen calories a day would I drop a bit and plateau or would it continue to fall?

Great article by the way!