Maggie's Farm

I'm going to make a snarky comment, just because I can. Not only can't Mr. Obama throw a basball, apparently from the videos of his arrival in India, he can't dance worth a darn either. No rhythm, I guess.

Marianne

Jim ... for the great majority of folks with normal genes, fatness is a choice, and a lack of self discipline.
Back when we were hunter-gatherers, we lived off the land and when there were bad weather seasons and poor crop production, we went hungry. An ability to store up fat meant that we could survive, while others with more active metabolisms would starve and perhaps even die. So our bodies learned that storing fat was a good thing. And bodies are slow learners. They don't unlearn something easily.

But people are smart. And they can learn. If they live sedentary lives, they learn that they need less food to be comfortably well-fed than physical laborers do. And folks can learn that kids need quite a lot more food as their bodies are building bones and healthy organs. When the hard work of that is complete [the human body is pretty well mature by the age of 25 or so] the body needs less food to maintain itself, so the smarter folks back off on the amount of food they eat.

But food lust intervenes in this predictable pattern of learning and good sense. When we're unhappy or frustrated, yummy food makes us feel better. So we stuff ourselves with chocolate or huge happy-burgers, or quarts of ice cream, and eventually we get fat.

The sad thing is that for most of us, it's our own fault, not a cruel accident of the gene pool. And the happy thing is that we can discipline ourselves out of it, if we try hard enough.

And I'll let you in on a little secret; as you age, the self discipline gets easier, and by the time you're 82, your appetites pretty much match your needs. This is one of the few good things about getting old [other than being able to tell people what they ought to be doing, and enjoying the pains of arthritis].

See how that works? And folks who are 82 deeply envy you because you're not that old yet.

Marianne