The list of things I try to get people to do is endless. If I didn t remind myself of the Serenity Prayer many times a day every day I practice medicine, I d either be a cynical, bitter, ineffectual pill pusher or a plumber. Look, if it were easy to change people s way of life, I d be out of a job. On the other hand, I d be thin myself. Overweight is one of those things about which I ve learned to be serene because it s so hard to fix.
Human bodies defend their weight very, very vigorously.
Stockholm, Sweden, studied nearly 4,000 adults. Not at all surprisingly, inactive, obese adults who smoked were worst off at the first survey. If they kept up their unhealthy ways, they were even less well eight years later. But if they improved any of their health habits they did better. The best news from this study is that obesity, the hardest of the risk factors to modify, had the least effect on health.