Obese People

It's familiar news by now that America's obesity epidemic is both dangerous and costly. Obesity significantly increases the risk of many diseases, including heart disease and diabetes, and is associated with at least 112,000 deaths a year. The economic impact is equally startling: Obese patients add an estimated $75 billion a year to the nation's medical bill.

Half of Americans say it's easier to do their taxes than it is to figure out how to eat healthfully - and 23% described their diets as extremely or very unhealthful, according to an annual survey conducted by an industry-supported nonprofit group and released on Wednesday. Taste trumps all, with 87% of people calling that the No. 1 factor in their decisions about buying food and beverages. Price (73%), healthfulness (61%) and convenience (53%) followed. (Price was more important for consumers younger than 50, healthfulness for those who are older.)

The ranks of obese Americans are expected to swell even further in the coming years, rising from 36% of the adult population today to 42% by 2030, experts said Monday. Kicking off a government-led conference on the public health ramifications of all those expanding waistlines, the authors of a new report estimated that the cost of treating those additional obese people for diabetes, heart disease and other medical conditions would add up to nearly $550 billion over the next two decades.

The ranks of obese Americans are expected to swell even further in the coming years, rising from 36% of the adult population today to 42% by 2030, experts said Monday. Kicking off a government-led conference on the public health ramifications of all those expanding waistlines, the authors of a new report estimated that the cost of treating those additional obese people for diabetes, heart disease and other medical conditions would add up to nearly $550 billion over the next two decades.

Forget about self-motivation -- people who want to lose weight might do better with more help, not less. A study finds that obese people lose more weight when they're part of a primary care-based program that incorporates lifestyle coaching, plus weight loss medication or meal replacement, compared with doctor visits alone. Researchers randomly placed 390 obese men and women into three groups that had the same goal of losing weight via diet and exercise. A "usual care" group took part in quarterly visits to their primary care provider during which they talked about any weight changes as well as weight loss information contained in a handout.

Can a fat body be a healthy body? Using a new grading tool that takes health issues into account in addition to body mass index, it may be possible for healthy obese people to have the same lifespan as normal-weight people. The findings were released Monday in a study in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism . Researchers looked at data on 6,224 obese men and women who were followed on average for about 16 years. The participants were part of the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study who attended the Cooper Aerobics Center in Dallas.

Having bariatric surgery doesn't mean you have to take it easy on exercise. A study finds that after surgery, exercising regularly at a moderate to vigorous pace may be perfectly fine -- and might improve one's quality of life. The study, published online recently in the journal Obesity , assigned 33 people with an average BMI of 41 (considered class III obesity, or morbidly obese) to either a 12-week exercise program or to a control group. The exercise group started out expending 500 calories a week, gradually increasing that to reach a goal of burning 2,000 calories a week.

After spending the majority of her 48 years trying, and failing, to slim down, Veronica Mahaffey was still 50 pounds overweight -- not morbidly obese by a long shot, but still far from the size she wanted. Worried about her health, she called a San Diego weight-loss surgery clinic last spring and asked for help. She was told no. At 185 pounds and with a body mass index of 28, the Ramona mother of four was not heavy enough to meet medical guidelines or insurance company qualifications for weight-loss surgery.

I'd never seen anyone this big move this fast. Shay Sorrells, all 350 pounds of her, was up ahead on the bike path, absolutely flying. Furiously pumping arms and legs, the former "Biggest Loser" contestant was riding a Street Strider, a newfangled rolling elliptical machine. Once 476 pounds, she'd taken the Strider home after leaving the show and was riding it an hour a day around Newport Bay, hammering the flats at 13 miles per hour and soaring down hills at 30 — no different than me, about half her size.

A study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine casts doubt on the value of an antiobesity drug that Amgen Inc. is developing. The Thomas Jefferson University study found that as many of 95% of obese people already have plenty of leptin--the protein Amgen researchers believe is an important regulator of body fat and that might hold the key to solving obesity problems.

"The Biggest Loser" is an extremely popular show that's spawned a mini weight-loss industry and inspired a slew of loyal followers. But does watching the show foster more positive or negative attitudes about overweight people? That's what researchers set out to find in a study, published online recently in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise . Participants included 59 people, mostly white women whose average age was 20. About half were randomly assigned to view an episode of "The Biggest Loser," while the others, acting as a control group, watched an episode of "Meerkat Manor," chosen because it featured no people who could have influenced the viewers' feelings about weight.

Older, obese people may be more prone to falls than their thinner peers, a study finds, and some may also be more prone to disability. The study, published recently in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society , followed 10,755 people age 65 and older for eight years. In that time there were 9,621 falls, and 3,130 of them required medical attention for injuries. Researchers also measured how much the fall affected activities of daily living, such as eating, getting dressed and walking across a room.

You have only days until you start your New Year's resolutions, and we're going to bet a lot of you have resolved to slim down in 2012. Speaking of betting...that's become a popular way to diet, with diet betting sites popping up on the Internet promising to help you lose a reasonable amount of weight by betting among your friends who will get there first in a set amount of time, and the winner gets the pot. Some sites allow you to bet against yourself....

Forget about self-motivation -- people who want to lose weight might do better with more help, not less. A study finds that obese people lose more weight when they're part of a primary care-based program that incorporates lifestyle coaching, plus weight loss medication or meal replacement, compared with doctor visits alone. Researchers randomly placed 390 obese men and women into three groups that had the same goal of losing weight via diet and exercise. A "usual care" group took part in quarterly visits to their primary care provider during which they talked about any weight changes as well as weight loss information contained in a handout.

Obese people using behavior therapy to lose weight might notice something as they trim their waistlines -- their family members may be slimming down as well. A recent study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Assn. found there could be a ripple effect when an obese family member uses cognitive behavioral therapy to lose weight, sometimes causing others in the family to drop some pounds at the same time. This type of psychotherapy used for weight loss focuses on changing lifestyle habits and becoming more mindful of thoughts and feelings about food.

Here's another health risk associated with carrying extra pounds: People who are obese get less protection from the annual flu shot, according to a study released Tuesday. But the authors said that people who are overweight or obese should get a seasonal flu shot anyway. The study involved 461 patients who were vaccinated in 2009 at a clinic in Chapel Hill, N.C. By several measures, the vaccine appeared to wear off faster in people who were overweight or obese than it did in people of healthy weight.  For instance, 11 months after getting a flu shot, the level of flu antibodies in the blood had dropped by a factor of four in 25% of the healthy-weight subjects.

Weight-loss surgery has been reserved for people who are morbidly obese, with a body mass index of 40 or greater. However, both gastric bypass surgery and adjustable gastric banding surgery is increasingly performed on less-obese people. That may be a good thing, according to a new study. Researchers at Stanford University looked at the outcomes of 981 people who had gastric bypass surgery. The patient's BMIs ranged from below 35 to greater than 50. The lower-BMI patients had better outcomes than the higher-BMI patients.

Obesity rates in the United States, which some health experts have suggested may be stabilizing at about 34%, will continue to rise until at least 42% of American adults are obese, according to a new model that projects the increase based on "social contagion. " The social contagion hypothesis garnered widespread attention in 2007 when researchers from UC San Diego, documented that obesity can spread through a social network -- just like viruses spread -- because people "infect" each other with their perceptions of weight.

Exercise relieved symptoms of arthritis in obese mice, even though they lost no weight from their efforts, a study finds. Excessive weight has long been considered one of the culprits of osteoarthritis, since it puts additional strain on joints. While exercise has been shown in some studies to ease arthritis symptoms, others have found that for overweight and obese people, a fitness regimen can exacerbate the condition. This study, published online Tuesday in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism , found that although weight may heighten the risk of osteoarthritis, regular exercise could diminish joint problems by slowing its progression.

Weight loss is a complex thing. In fact, the old rule that cutting out or burning 500 calories a day will result in a steady, 1-pound-per-week weight loss doesn't reflect real people, researchers say. A new mathematical model from researchers at the National Institutes of Health instead shows that for the typical overweight adult, every 10-calorie-per-day reduction will result in the loss of about 1 pound over three years. Half that loss will occur in the first year. For example, cutting 250 calories a day from one's diet will lead to a 25-pound weight loss over three years.