Statistics say that 73% of Americans are overweight. Everybody knows the health and functional consequences of being overweight, however defined. Most people do not care. It's a free country, so I don't care if you do not.
If you care about fitness and functionality, staying trim and strong is a good idea. Staying strong is easy: Go to the gym or something daily with weights and cardio and calisthenics. It is rewarding if not exactly fun. Exercise will not keep many people trim.
It's an American thing. I don't know why because many parts of the world are full of cheap, tasty fast foods.
Without wanting to seem obnoxious to any overweight readers, I have to offer the best article I've seen about nutrition and weight. It's a bit of a long read, but entirely reasonable: Behavioral Nutrition.
The authors are correct. For many people, willpower doesn't work. Habits do. A quote:
Modern weight-loss approaches thus constitute an incomplete approach to long-term weight-control and one that must be complimented by a much more comprehensive appreciation of dietary habits, thought patterns and behaviors, and individual differences in consumption, food preferences, and control, as outlined below in a new approach to weight-loss [21]. Indeed, the selection and consumption of food in the modern era of abundance may have little to with nutritional analysis, appropriate macronutrient levels, or sustenance, as educational programs over the past decades have ensured that most the population is aware of what constitutes a healthy diet. Instead it could be argued that food consumption (and thus long-term weight control) is driven by a host of forces including personality, cognitive processes, food history, personal habits, ingrained behaviors, genetics, responses to environmental cues, neurochemistry and biological drivers, and mood states. In such circumstances, the current model of weight loss, with its emphasis on education, caloric restriction, moderation (moderate food intake) and will power, is ill equipped to promote sustainable weight-control and instead may have resulted in high rates of failure. One must question where the scientific evidence for this longstanding and continued approach to weight management lies, or perhaps by focusing on the most obvious factor, calories, and the field has overlooked the most critical, the person consuming those calories...
