"You need to step it up, people,” said Jeannine Stein in the Los Angeles Times
Health blog. A new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that obese
women who stuck to their diets and exercised 55 minutes a day kept off a 10
percent weight loss, while those who only exercised for 30 minutes a day kept
off only 5 percent.
But even the women who ate right and exercised the most remained overweight,
said Laura Blue in Time.com, so the study reinforced the belief of many
researchers that diet and exercise are not “a reliable cure for obesity.”
Biology plays a part, so willpower isn’t enough to achieve thinness.
Men are a case in point, said Leslie Beck in the Toronto Globe and Mail. “The
fact that a man burns more calories at rest and during physical activity makes
it easier for him to eat more without gaining weight and to lose weight faster
than a woman of a similar size.”
If moderation alone did the trick, said the blog The Ethicurean, rising food
prices would make us all slim soon. But another new study says that 86 percent
of Americans will qualify as obese or overweight by 2030, with black women and
Hispanic men suffering the most. “Poor people in other countries starve, but
ours get to have heart attacks and diabetes. Let’s toast our American food
policies with a supersize soda!"
