The National Institute on Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease, part of National Institutes of Health, explores special challenges of obese in its booklet, Active at Any Size.

"Very large people face special challenges in trying to be active," NIDDK notes. "You may not be able to bend or move in same way that other people can. It may be hard to find clothes and equipment for exercising. You may feel self-conscious being active around other people. Facing these challenges is hard—but it can be done!"

The booklet describes activities that very large people can undertake, and it takes special care to include non-weight-bearing activities such as water exercise and bicycling, to avoid stressing knee and ankle joints.

The NIDDK's points for getting started and keeping at it pretty much apply to people of all sizes:

1. Start slowly. Your body needs time to get used to your new activity. 2. Warm up. Warm-ups get your body ready for action. Shrug your shoulders, tap your toes, swing your arms, or march in place. You should spend a few minutes warming up for any activity—even walking.

Reviewed by: David F. Duncan

The author states that this book will examine "both 'big picture' and its finer details in considering many ways AIDS affected nation's hardest hit community, gay men." He succeeds in presenting many telling details of that impact. We are introduced to personalities, informed about critical events, and acquainted with controversies that might have lain forgotten in old newspaper archive or fading memories if they werent collected in this book. My only criticism of this rich body of material is that it is poorly organized, especially with regard to chronology. The events covered in a single paragraph may skip forward and backward over a decade.