No. 1 is utterly true. It's like I hit 40, and my whole metabolism just spun down to about 60%, the weight piled on despite no change to my diet or lifestyle. I'm still overweight (40" waist, 5'11" height), but having never really exercised in the past, getting the motivation to do it (and more importantly keep at it) is really hard.

So now I eat yoghurts instead of bagels, and stare miserably at my sugarless fat free white tea. For all the good it does...