Here's something I read from this book, "Hypochondria can Kill",
by John Naish, that I thought you folks might find interesting too
:
"If you are slim, you may have no reason to scoff. Losing weight
may not be the great health-enhancer anyway. It might not be
fatness, but fitness, that counts, say doctors who warn that thin
couch potatoes are more at risk of illness than fat people who
exercise.
"Unfit men who are not obese have almost three times the death rate
of other men who are fit but medically obese, say researchers at
the Cooper Inst for Aerobics Research in Dallas, Texas, which
studied 25,000 males for nearly 20 years.
"The Institute's Director of Research, Steven Blair, told a London
conference in July 1997 that when researchers normally study obese
people, they discover illnesses that they blame on fat. In fact, it
is their laziness that's unhealthy, he claimed at the Health
Education Authority conference.
Ooooohhh... in that case, hand me the choc chip cookie before I
head out for a brisk walk! 
