I read some posts about exercise and weight control and I have always wondered what it is about my body that MUST have a very strenuous program to keep from gaining weight/getting soft. Some people I know can just walk a mile a day and keep very slim and looking great. I got a dog two years ago and I walk AT least a mile a day with her on top of running or weight lifting. At times I am sick or just going through a transitional period that makes it tough to exercise regularly, I am still walking my dog a mile or more a day and I still lose my level of fitness and get flabby.

I have to have strenuous exercise – running, aerobics, weightlifting, biking, anything that makes me sweat profusely and makes my muscles sore. Anything lighter and I will see cottage cheese thighs in no time. Why is that? Don’t tell me it is genes, it can’t be. My dad is slim and my mom never exercised a day in her life and was skinny (well, she is overweight at now, at 56, but wasnt at my age – 32). I have been doing strenuous exercise since age 15 to keep from getting jiggly thighs. I have never been overweight, but I have gone through sedentary periods where I put flab very quickly on my thighs, butt and upper arms.

If I work out, it takes about two weeks to tighten back up. So it gets out of shape fast and back into shape fast too. Weird. Still it is not fair, I feel like a hamster on an exercise wheel because I am scared to stop for even just a week or two. Getting a cold for a week is long enough to blow most of my recent hard work and so frustrating. I look at my husband who is sedentary in between rugby seasons for months at a time and he looks nearly the same as when he is training! He loses weight and gets leaner not working out! I want to know why he hardly gets flabby while he is on vacation from the gym.

One of the problems with obnoxious, condescending advice (particularly when unsolicited) such as, “eat less and/or exercise more” is that it represents circular reasoning. I *already* eat quite a bit less than the average thin person my age. I *already* exercise quite a bit more than the average adult of any age. This means nothing to a certain m.h.d participant I will not name, and people like him. They have a preconceived all-purpose reply, which saves them the trouble of thinking or empathizing with others: “You are eating too much or exercising too little for your particular metabolic needs.”

Their conclusion is a disguised restatement of their premise. The premise is, “Anyone who is too fat eats too much or exercises too little.” The conclusion is, “If you need to lose weight, your only option is to exercise more or eat less. If you don’t succeed, you have no one to blame but yourself.” The person I do not name is brave in newsgroups. If he spoke to real people in real life with such arrogance, it would only be a matter of time before someone pounded him into a bloody pulp. For example, I’d like to watch him tell big, stupid guys, “You are stupid because you either don’t think hard enough or don’t think often enough. I guarantee that if you try thinking harder and/or more often, you will become less stupid.” On second thought, I’ve never met him.

It is possible that he is a big stupid guy himself. Still, there’s always someone bigger and stupider. But I digress. I might add that this kind of condescending and useless advice is almost invariably the advice effortlessly thin people give to people who desperately want or need to lose weight. My guess is that he-who-shall-not-be-named has never had to struggle with his weight. Getting back to the circular reasoning, the problem lies in the premise. It seems logical and factual, but it isn’t. Although it seems logical at first, life is not as simple as the premise would make it seem. Eating is not entirely voluntary, even though it seems so at first glance. Most people who eat below a certain calorie intake will suffer persistent fatigue, cravings for food, impulses to eat, and so on.

It is no mystery that eating a healthy diet and exercising can make extra pounds disappear. But the results of a new study suggest that lifestyle changes may also lower levels of leptin, the “obesity hormone´´ thought to be involved in appetite regulation. Fat cells and other tissues in the body produce leptin, which is believed to notify the brain to reduce appetite when fat cells are “full.´´ Exactly how the hormone works to control appetite is uncertain, however. To see what effect weight loss has on leptin levels, Dr. Janne E. Reseland of the University of Oslo in Norway and colleagues followed 186 men with moderately high blood pressure and cholesterol levels who made lifestyle changes. A “control´´ group of men did not change their diet or begin exercising. Others were randomly assigned to adopt a reduced-calorie diet, to begin an exercise program, or to combine both lifestyle changes. Not surprisingly, exercise, a healthy diet or a combination of the two led to weight loss, including a reduction in body fat, during the one-year study.

The investigators also found that leptin levels declined significantly in men who made changes in diet, exercise or both. The findings are published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. But when the researchers took into account the amount of fat lost during the study, they found that leptin levels dropped more than expected. “We conclude that long-term diet and exercise interventions may have direct effects on the plasma leptin concentration beyond the effect expected due to changes in fat mass,´´ the authors conclude. One interpretation of the findings, Reseland told Reuters Health, is that long-term reductions in leptin levels may somehow adjust the way the central nervous system regulates appetite and metabolism.

This adjustment may help maintain weight loss in the long run, according to Reseland. Since some researchers had hoped that giving people leptin might encourage weight loss, it may seem odd that the current study found that leptin levels decreased with weight loss. However, past studies have found that people who are obese do not lack the hormone, they actually have higher-than-normal levels. The researchers do not have a firm answer to these questions, but according to Reseland, overweight individuals may develop a resistance to leptin, meaning that their bodies become less responsive to the hormone’s appetite-regulating messages.