Wonderful article to read in the NYTimes:
As I leafed through the binder, I could see that the Bellolis and their friends stayed in very good health over the years. As they aged, they mostly remained trim, even as many other Framingham residents succumbed to obesity. The fattening of America annoys Eileen — “people are becoming more and more accustomed to not taking responsibility for their actions,” she said — and she particularly prides herself on remaining active. Almost every day she does a three-mile circuit inside the local mall with her husband and a cluster of friends, though she speed walks so rapidly that some gripe about her breakneck pace. Her one vice used to be smoking, usually right after her teaching day ended. “I would take myself to Friendly’s with a book, and I would sit there and have two cups of coffee and two cigarettes,” she said. At the time, her cigarette habit didn’t seem like a problem; most of her friends also smoked socially. But in the late 1980s, a few of them began to quit, and pretty soon Eileen felt awkward holding a cigarette off to one side when out at a restaurant. She quit, too, and within a few years nobody she knew smoked anymore.
– from NYTimes