The confusion surrounding weight loss and proper diet is a good indicator of the obesity epidemic, and how severe it has become. Magazines and internet sites are bursting with hysterical claims, while the medical community offers a host of unproven and often conflicting findings.

Most agree however, that lifestyle is the key and that there is no magic-bullet cure. Against the shrill cries to the weight loss debate, simple anecdotal evidence about lifestyle has a lot to offer.

With that in mind, I am going to write about my adopted city, my friends, and what I have noticed about their lifestyle. I moved to Berlin, Germany in 2003. My friends are mostly artists and musicians, and I've noticed that they look great. Here's what I've noticed about their lifestyles:

1) They are on a mission - painters, photographers, writers, and musicians are all struggling all the time. Even the successful ones are struggling. They know that the minute they sit back and pat themselves on the back, the quality of their work will suffer.

2) They walk and ride bicycles - it's not so much that they are health-conscious as that they are poor. Cars are expensive. Many of them ride the subway without paying, which when you factor in the worrying about being caught also amounts to some form of exercise.

3) They eat smaller portions - again this has more to do with the contents of their wallets. But if you only have a little cash for food, go for something with some vitamins like a yam, some eggs, you know, real food.

4) They use coffee and cigarettes as appetite suppressants - from a health prospective this is horrible advice to follow, but it does seem to work. It also leads to painful cancers and it's an expensive habit. Stick with coffee.

5) They are very social - an artist that doesn't go to gallery openings, a musician that doesn't go to concerts, they won't get anywhere with their art. So whether they feel like it or not, they get out most nights of the week.

So to re-cap, if my friends are any indication, the key to weight loss is finding an over-riding obsession to create art of some kind. And art leads to a physically and socially active lifestyle, coffee instead of breakfast, and poverty enforced exercise and diet.