I don't know when or by how much the effect on life expectancy that obesity has is overstated -- funnily enough I think the same is true of smoking -- but one t

I don't know when or by how much the effect on life expectancy that obesity has is overstated -- funnily enough I think the same is true of smoking -- but one thing I'm more sure of is that obesity is likely to greatly decrease the quality of, say, the latter half of your life. It's just not very fun to have diabetes, "minor" strokes and heart attacks, or the various less-scary but very uncomfortable issues that obesity greatly contributes to. A nice way a friend of mine put it once is that you want to compress all the morbidity you'll experience into the last few years of your life, and being active and lean goes a long way there.