A turnaround in the lifestyle can meet the challenge head on. But can we give up our creature comforts and do some 'menial' jobs ourselves?

While wealthy Northerners eat themselves to death, malnutrition takes its toll in the underdeveloped South. One of the most understated rewards of prosperity is the changeover to a low-physical-activity lifestyle.

The sluggishness starts with cooking. While fresh dough is baked in most of the Southeast Asia needing quite an effort at cooking a meal, ready-to-eat bread and almost all other eatables available off the shelf in the departmental stores of the West offer a no-hassles eating.

Well, you save yourself from hassles here and take hassles there - gyms and workout classes are a big industry in the US, where those extra calories are sought to be flushed out.

While a Bangladeshi has to walk 10 kilometers a day, for an average American walking means those few steps while at home, walking down to his car and back. The ever growing prosperity means the ever shrinking time that is available to an individual for himself and even for those so-called menial jobs at home.

Chinese and Japanese knew obesity a rarity among themselves just a decade back. Now they can boast of a sizeable market for weight loss supplements. Weight loss programs make for one of the fastest home enterprises taken up by the young unemployed or underemployed of the South. Mushrooming weight loss parlours even in the C class towns of India are cashing on the expanding look-fit-look-pretty market.

Weight loss tips to weight loss products, they work for those who have determination of steel. We are a generation for whom any drastic change in our lifestyle would mean giving up on those creature comforts and there is a social tag to it as well. A doctor advised one of his obese patients to relieve his car cleaning boy and do the job himself every morning. "What the neighbours would think, that I can no longer afford that cleaning boy?"- was his response.

Look at these statistics - 50 million Americans go dieting every year and only 5 percent are able to maintain the weight loss they achieve. All said and done, if you have not been doing fine with your weight loss program, try this to get there fast - give up on processed food completely, eat green vegetables without peeling for salad, low fat milk is a good replacement for full meal in the day and pop up some wheat grains for your snacking; no white sugar but half a spoon of white butter is not a bad idea that can go with a slice or two of whole wheat bread; the idea is to fill up yourselves with fibre and not fat and carbohydrates.

Some 'menial' home jobs are a must not only to shed and keep those pounds in check but also to keep those joints and muscles supple - how about washing your daily linen before you take bath?