Obesity is the biggest epidemic that is plaguing the United States today. With more than a third of Americans now declared to be obese, the entire country is facing the brunt of the health and lifestyle concerns that go with bearing the morbidly excess amount of weight every day.
However, as many who suffer from obesity already painfully know, diet and exercise, and even willpower and determination, are simply not enough to shed the pounds and keep them off.
Now, a new study published in the journal The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology confirms that more is required to truly make a change and lose weight.
According to the research conducted by a group of obesity treatment experts, a person's body shape is predetermined at birth. Therefore, efforts to lose extra pounds usually result in an 80 to 95 percent return to being overweight.
Programs that help obese people lose weight actually just put them into a kind of remission that takes much effort to maintain in order to keep at a healthy body weight.
So any real diet or weight loss treatment must take into consideration a person's unique body mechanisms and other uncontrollable genetic and biological factors that make them naturally obese in the first place.
"Therefore, the current advice to eat less and exercise more may be no more effective for most individuals with obesity than a recommendation to avoid sharp objects for someone bleeding profusely," the study authors wrote.
These new insights will, however, allow obesity treatment experts to find better ways of helping treat obesity. While diet and exercise are still the only scientifically proven ways to help obese people, they must be done in conjuction with treatments that look into the underlying cause of obesity, whether they be psychological or biological.
Although health experts are disagreeing somewhat on how to interpret these new findings about the effectiveness of diet and exercise on obesity, it is clear that a real shift in the way obesity is viewed must be made in order to help the millions who currently suffer from it.
In addition to better treatments, the authors of the study also urge everyone to begin talking about "morbid obesity functioning in the same way as a chronic disease."
