Obese People

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.

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.

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.

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.

Overweight and obese young adults may be known by the company they keep--other overweight and obese people. But if those friends and family members are trying to lose weight, they could be a good influence. How social groups influence our health was the subject of a 2007 New England Journal of Medicine study that found that people who had close friends who were fat might triple their risk of becoming obese as well. A similar connection was found in a study from the June issue of the journal Obesity . But researchers found that connection may also help people lose weight.