Saw a report on NBC Nightly News this week about obesity in Appalachia and how in some areas, more the 40% of the population is obese. The Memphis area is one of those areas, it being the unofficial capital of Mississippi and all.

One of the things that the doctor interview rightly pointed out is that the area is full of a lot of poorer people who simply can't afford the foods they would need to change their lifestyle.

Jamie and I really changed our lifestyle a couple of years ago. After yo-yoing back up a few years ago, I decided to try something different. Atkins wasn't sustainable, I tried it. You can do it for a while, but the variety of foods just isn't there. You can only take that much meat and green vegetables for so long.

And exercise alone is not enough. Unless you change what you eat, it's not going to work.

So we did the South Beach Diet, and that's pretty much what we still eat now, a couple of years later. And it is expensive. Sure, we could get rid of some of the more expensive South Beach brand convenience/comfort food items, but that's what has worked for us. My main snack is a mix of nuts. Those things are crazy expensive.

Mint says that we spend more than twice as much on groceries as others in our state. Though we spend about a third of what most folks in the state spend on restaurants.

The general rule of thumb really is that the vast majority of the foods you eat should be found on the perimeter of the grocery store, and not in the interior aisles. But despite what the Federal government says, things ARE getting more expensive.

It's just going to be really hard for Americans to lose the weight with the costs so high.