There is, apparently, an ‘obesity epidemic’ in the UK, such that two million people could benefit from weight-loss surgery. Ancient Greeks would have argued that they would benefit much more from a dose of self-control.
The ancients associated fatness with a lazy lifestyle. No change there, then. The doctor Hippocrates, well aware that sudden death was associated with obesity, knew that ‘dieting which causes excessive loss of weight, as well as the feeding-up of the emaciated, is beset with difficulties’. The Roman doctor Celsus (1st C ad) advised thin men to put on weight through rest, constipation and big meals, and the fat to take it off through late nights, worry and exercise.
But none of this faced the real problem: as Demosthenes said, ‘there is no difficulty explaining what it is best to do, only in making you actually do it’.
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