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Thinking too much can make you eat more. Researchers at Universite Laval say intellectual work raises peoples' calorie intake and could be a reason for obesity. A group of 14 students were invited to eat as much as they wanted at a buffet, after taking part in three different tasks: * Sitting down and relaxing * Reading and summarizing a text * Finishing memory and attention tests on a computer All the tasks turned out to be low energy -- students only needed three more calories to do the mental work than to rest. However, they spontaneously ate 203 more...

EDINBURG -- Authorities scrambled Friday to figure out how to arrest, incarcerate and prosecute a woman estimated to weigh nearly half a ton who was indicted on capital murder charges earlier this week. Mayra Rosales, 27, has remained under house arrest since she was charged in March with beating her 2-year-old nephew to death. But now that her case has moved into the state court system, law enforcement officials must address a whole new set of logistical problems before it can go to trial.

I Read a story in the Washington Post about the death of a young woman. This ultra-huge died in her sleep. Her mom blamed it on obesity. Possibly so ... her mom is obese herself. In the story the mom bemoans the lack of "affordable" weight loss clinics and exercise facilities. Oh boy ... here we go. As we know, in the modern USA every single item or service that a person could possibly need or even want must be affordable. The new mantra is that there is something wrong with our country, our economy and our government if someone...

Six young brothers and sisters face being taken from their parents and put into care because they are overweight. Social workers have warned they will intervene if three of the youngsters – including a 12-year-old boy who weighs 16 stone – do not shed several pounds in three months. The parents have been told they risk losing all their children if there is no improvement in the 12-year-old or two of his sisters aged 11 and three – who weigh 12 stone and four stone – by June. The parents could lose their obese children if they cannot help them...

It was alleged he spent $80,000 over a 10-year period on hookers. But the morality of public servants and the hypocrisy of high office, the fact that he wanted “unsafe” sex - this wasn’t what people were talking about. Most of the focus was on “Kristen”, the prostitute he met at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington DC and booked for $1,000 an hour. She was described as, “American, petite, very pretty, brunette, 5 feet 5 inches, and 105 pounds”. My female friends in New York were outraged. “105 pounds? No way.” This was the biggest grievance. Not that she was...

“The obesity epidemic has absolutely been exaggerated,” said Dr. Vincent Marks. I once ticked off the local franchiser of Weight Watchers by pointing out my weight gain after quitting smoking was no big deal. OK, the column should not have pointed out that the Nazis did not feed people to death in the Holocaust. Did I mention she’s Jewish? Now we have been told to the point of ridiculousness that we face an obesity epidemic — an abuse of a noun that really medical professionals, of all people, should avoid. The definition of overweight and obese were redefined to the...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The central Mexican city of Aguascalientes is considering paying a cash bonus to local police who slim down, amid the increasingly common sight of overweight officers in Mexico. Aguascalientes city hall plans to decide next week on whether to pay 100 pesos (5 pounds) for every kilogram (2.2 pounds) that officers lose, a police spokesman said on Thursday. "We do have some fat officers. We have been encouraging them for a while to lose weight, to be more agile, to do sport," he added. Obesity is one of the biggest health problems in Mexico, where diabetes...

HEALTH and beauty. They seem inextricable. That smiling, slender woman on the cover of Self magazine. The ripped guy looking out from the pages of Men’s Health. They’re thin. Their eyes are bright. They look like they’re bursting with energy. They may well be. But they might be better off if they had listened to their grandmother and... --snip-- Today, poorer people are most likely to be fat and so, said Abigail Saguy, a sociologist at the University of California at Los Angeles, “fatness is associated with downward mobility.” Weight has thus become a moral issue couched in health concerns,...

some doctors are now warning that bariatic surgery - which jumped 40% in frequency in 2005 from the year before - can increase a patient's risk of a rare, yet serious neurological condition called Wernicke's encephalopathy. A result of a vitamin B deficiency (no doubt spurred by the poor digestion that removal of large portions of the stomach and intestine can cause), this condition can cause confusion and impaired coordination, memory, and vision.

Obesity is more dangerous than smoking and will dramatically shorten the lives of millions, a landmark study has found. While smoking reduces life by an average of ten years, the research says being seriously overweight can cut life expectancy by as much as 13 years. The Foresight report, written by 250 leading scientists, says Britain's obesity crisis is so severe that it would take at least 30 years to reverse. If current trends continue, by 2050 about 60 per cent of men, 50 per cent of women and 25 per cent of children in the UK will be clinically obese...

Americans are obsessed with fat because fatness has become a symbol for poverty, downward mobility, nonwhiteness and socially marginal status in general. Fear and hatred of fat has very little to do with the health risks associated with being "overweight" and "obese" (which are wholly imaginary and highly exaggerated

The original prototype for the kilogram, stored under lock and key near Paris, appears to be losing weight. The cylinder, which dates back from 1889, seems to have lost 50 micrograms, compared with the average of dozens of copies of the original. Richard Davis, of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sevres, said: "The mystery is that they were all made of the same material, and many were made at the same time and kept under the same conditions, and yet the masses among them are slowly drifting apart." The one in Sevres is the original that the...

I don’t often remark on entertainment subjects; this is the sort of thing I leave to people whose childhoods included eating paint chips while listening to Casey Kasem. With that said, the Britney Spears debacle during the MTV Video Music Awards is a situation that requires a comment. I will leave the topic of her lip syncing, dancing, and speculation of her intoxication level to those who were apologists for Marv Albert after he slipped on a leather teddy and bit a prostitute a decade of so ago. It is the criticism of her body that I am having a...

DALLAS, Sept. 6 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists have determined a single "skinny gene" might alone control whether a body tends to accumulate fat. "From worms to mammals, this gene controls fat formation," said Dr. Jonathan Graff of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, the study's senior author. "It could explain why so many people struggle to lose weight and suggests an entirely new direction for developing medical treatments that address the current epidemic of diabetes and obesity." The gene, called adipose, was discovered more than 50 years ago but its mechanism was not determined. In the new study, researchers...

Rules require link only http://www.theolympian.com/opinion/story/117372.html

HAVANA - A statement signed by Fidel Castro Wednesday said his weight was stable and he was eating solid foods after months of intravenous feeding that followed several operations, including an initial surgery that did not go well. The statement from the 80-year-old Cuban leader said he was taking all medicines orally and his weight had stabilized. "I tell everyone simply that I am getting better and maintain a stable weight of about 176 pounds," he wrote. "It wasn't just one operation, but various. Initially it wasn't successful and had a bearing on my prolonged recuperation." He added that the...

The bad body image blues has been hitting some big names in music hard these days. First, British sensation Lily Allen posted on her MySpace blog that she was researching liposuction because she thinks she is chubby. Now Star magazine (via I'm Not Obsessed) is reporting that Kelly Clarkson is on a mission to lose weight in order to get a boyfriend.

This is from the Journal Of American Medical Association published on 7 March 2007. The authors are Christopher D. Gardner, PhD et al and the study was sponsored by Stanford University. This is a prospective study of these diets. The Atkins Diet is very low carbohydrate. The LEARN DIET is a comprehensive lifestyle, excercise, attitude and relationship approach that includes a diet low in fat and high carbohydrate. The Ornish Diet is very high in carbohydrates. The Zone Diet is low in carbohydrate. These diets are popular and can be easily Googled. Seventy or more premenopausal women randomly assigned to...

"Full fat dairy products are more likely to keep you slim than comparable low fat foods. That's the apparently topsy-turvy conclusion of a new Swedish study, which shows that the fat encourages calcium uptake. Researchers at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute now reckon that daily consumption of full fat dairy products will lead to a reduction of obesity, reported Svenska Dagbladet. "

CHICAGO - Want to spend less at the pump? Lose some weight. That's the implication of a new study that says Americans are burning nearly 1 billion more gallons of gasoline each year than they did in 1960 because of their expanding waistlines. Simply put, more weight in the car means lower gas mileage. Using recent gas prices of $2.20 a gallon, that translates to about $2.2 billion more spent on gas each year. "The bottom line is that our hunger for food and our hunger for oil are not independent. There is a relationship between the two," said University...