You have no lunch.

For dinner you get a larger bowl of warm maize porridge with, perhaps, a small portion of stew.

That is the daily diet of most of the poorer people in sub-Saharan Africa. No wonder there are so few overweight people there.

Yet, there are some who manage to become overweight even in that part of the world.

How did they get to be that way?

The short answer is prosperity.

The chiefs, high ranking government officials and those with prosperous businesses, who can afford a better diet, put on weight.

With prosperity comes the ability to purchase a wider variety of foods. It is only natural that a person who has eaten a restricted diet for much of their life should select foods rich in taste when they have the ability to buy such foods.

High Taste Often Equals Wide Waste

Rich in taste often also means high in calories.

But it ain't necessarily so.

There are foods with high taste that do not lead to pounds on the waist.

However, I digress, there is more to be said about the relationship between prosperity and body weight.

Imagine, that you have been poor all your life and you suddenly win millions on the lottery. Your first instinct would be to go out and spend, spend, spend.

You would go out and buy everything you have always wanted. And then, the pattern seems to be, you'd go on spending just because you could.

It is remarkable how many of the big jackpot winners in every country manage to spend their way through their entire winnings in a few short years.

There seems to be a human behavior pattern whereby deprived people who achieve prosperity feel compelled to spend their money indiscriminately. They simply buy whatever appeals to their senses of sight, sound, taste, touch and smell.

Prosperity Creates Indiscriminate Eating Patterns

The same pattern seems to apply with food. When a food-deprived person becomes prosperous they eat indiscriminately. They do not concern themselves with a balanced diet. They simply eat what tastes and smells good.

What is remarkable is that a similar pattern seems to apply with entire countries. As they become more prosperous, the population spends more and more and they do it indiscriminately. We are seeing this very noticeably in Russia at the moment.

The population, recently released from the financial restrictions caused by Communism, has become one of the most consumer goods hungry peoples on earth.

It is only natural that when the people hunger for something and have the wherewithal to purchase, someone will supply. This is why all the consumer goods franchises like Prada, Gucci, Channel, Starbucks and McDonalds now proliferate in Moscow.

What has this got to do with your weight?

Two parts of the prosperity pattern affect our eating habits.

First, as people become wealthier they lose interest in working. Housework and daily cooking are seen increasingly as chores to be avoided.

How are they avoided? By eating out, often at fast food restaurants where the menus are designed to be high on taste.

As I just said high taste often equals high calories.

When you combine a more leisurely lifestyle with a higher calorie diet, the waistline just naturally expands.

Calorie Surplus Turns To Fat

So, if you have an expanding waistline you are caught in the cleft stick of lowering activity and heightened calorie intake. You have a daily calorie surplus that is turning to fat.

Research shows that people very quickly become strongly attached to lifestyle habits. They find it easy to justify why they "need" to behave in ways that satisfy their hungers.

The truth is that all they are doing is talking themselves into believing that they "need" to behave in that way.

The bottom line is that if their survival depended on it they would change very quickly.

The problem is that people do not see it as a matter of survival. They are happy to go on poisoning their bodies with excess calories because they're just plain idle.

It doesn't make sense to take great care about the fuel you put in your car and not give a damn about what you put into your body.

Isn't it weird that people care more about the fleeting satisfaction that comes from a taste that lasts for nano-seconds than they care about their body that they need for their entire life.

As I said at the start of this article there is an answer. It is to find new tastes, flavours and smells that appeal to you just as much, but which don't have the calorie load of fast or convenience foods.

Losing Weight For 52 Days

I have been losing weight now for 52 days. The weight has been coming off steadily, week by week. During this time all my meals have been tasty. I can hardly recall a day when I felt hungry. Neither can I recall a day when I spent a lot of time preparing food.

As a married working man, I prepare my own breakfast and lunch and my wife usually cooks our evening meal.

For my breakfast I have a bowl of muesli and dried fruits with semi-skimmed milk, plus a glass of juice. For lunch I prepare a salad with French dressing topped with tinned fish or boiled egg or grated cheese. I also have one or two pieces of fruit for lunch.

If I need a snack I have a crispbread with a raw vegetable or some dried fruit and nuts.

For dinner we have either fish or meat and potatoes, rice or pasta, with two vegetables. For dessert I usually have yoghurt or fruit or sometimes both together.

My daily exercises are done at my desk or when I take my dogs for their daily walks. My diet is varied, tasty and healthy. But the most important part is that it's tasty. If it didn't taste good I would quickly get bored and look for other things to eat.

I have made it my business to care for my body. As part of my self-care campaign I have taught myself to enjoy shopping for tasty food and preparing the food in a taste-full way.