[sworkhard]

When calculating the costs of obesity you have to include a lot more than the medical costs. Obese people tend to have less energy, sleep worse, and have more minor injuries from physical exercise and as a result are less productive than people of a healthy weight. This tends to take a tole on a persons quality of life and happiness. In addition, this reduced energy and lack of quality sleep often is what prevents people from making the meaningful changes necessary to lose the weight.

Biggest reason for this is that willpower, focus and concentration is a limited shares resource and is recharged through sleep and light exercise. It can, however be enhanced with meditation and other mental exercises and for many people doing this is all that necessary to get the ball rolling towards a healthier lifestyle, even without making a special effort to do so.

I wish I could find the link now but I read a reasonably recent study that indicated the biggest difference between people with healthy body fat level and those with a lot of excess is that the fat ones thought they ate less than they really did while the healthy ones thought they ate more than they actually did. Just shows why tracking what you eat us so effective for fat loss.