Smoking and obesity equally unhealthy: The Quality-Adjusted Life Years (Qalys) lost as a result of obesity is now equal to, if not greater than, those lost from smoking.

One in seven content with current weight. Everyone else thinks he/she weighs too much.

Do you tend to burn more fat exercising outdoors in colder weather? No.

Women who live with a mate put on more pounds than those who live without one: The 10-year weight gain for an average 140-pound woman was 20 pounds if she had a baby and a partner, 15 if she had a partner but no baby, and only 11 pounds if she was childless with no partner.

Wearable wireless sensors can monitor overweight and obese people as they go about their daily lives: how many minutes they work out, how much food they consume and even whether they are at a fast-food joint when they should be in the park.

Mr. Wiseman points to an experiment that monitored the health and activity of two groups of hotel attendants (that is, housekeepers) with roughly equal workloads and lifestyle habits. One group was made constantly aware of how many calories it burned by simply doing its labor-intensive work—implanting the idea that “wow, your job involves lots of exercise.” Over time that group (and not the other) saw improvements in its body mass index and blood pressure even though it was doing nothing differently.

Mr. Wiseman concludes: “By reminding the attendants of the amount of exercise that they were getting on a daily basis, the researchers altered the attendants’ beliefs about themselves, and their bodies responded to make these beliefs a reality.” The larger lesson is that being aware of an effort may help to bring about its effect.

Full review of Richard Wiseman’s new book, 59 Seconds.

The winner of the program’s first season, Ryan C. Benson [pictured below], who lost 122 of his 330-pound starting weight…is now back above 300 pounds but he thinks he has been shunned by the show because he publicly admitted that he dropped some of the weight by fasting and dehydrating himself to the point that he was urinating blood.

At least one other contestant has confessed to using dangerous weight-loss techniques, including self-induced dehydration. On the first episode of the current season, two contestants were sent to the hospital, one by airlift after collapsing from heat stroke during a one-mile race.

Full story in The New York Times.

   Before                                          After

Eating much, much less helped rats live longer. Will it work on humans?

Study: After calorie postings in restaurants, people eat more calories.

No need to diet: tinkering with one gene may give you a longer, healthier life.

Claim: A big dose of sugar can immediately suppress your immune system: That makes you more vulnerable to colds, flu and other infections.

Bloggers’ verdict: the Surgeon General pick is too fat.

 Regina Benjamin

30% of all Southern blacks are obese: For every 100 obese whites in the South there are 151 obese blacks.

The odds that overweight, middle-aged women will live to age 70 can be as low as 20%: Each 2.2 pound gain since age 18 lowers the probability by 5%.

Working moms have fatter kids.

Extreme obesity can shorten people's lives by 12 years.

Food stamps contribute to weight gain.

Obese people have 8 percent less brain tissue than normal-weight individuals.

Butter, salt and goose fat are back: New York Times re-releases Julia Child's cookbook.

Obese spend $1,400 a year more on health care. They account for almost 10% of health care spending.

Childhood obesity rates: Texas is number 1 (one in five obese); Wyoming comes in 50^th (one in ten obese).

Less than 10 percent of men are able to lose their "beer belly."

Eating raw food helps shed pounds.

A tough economy causes people to pack on the pounds.

Health insurance makes you fat. (HT to Jason Shafrin.)

People in nearly half of states (23) gained weight last year. Mississippi is the fattest state – with one-in-three (32.5%) adults officially obese.  It's followed by Alabama (31.2%), West Virginia (31.1%) and Tennessee (30.2%). Colorado (18.9%) is the fittest state, followed by Massachusetts (21.2%) and Connecticut (21.3%).

Corpse of a 750-pound woman dragged from home and hauled away in a trailer by a wrecker service, as boyfriend and son look on. News video includes interviews with neighbors.