Painless way to lose 33 lbs

[Phlegm]

According to this article, you can lose 33 pounds a year just by pacing and fidgeting..... no exercise require.

A Painless Way to Lose 33 Pounds

The venerable Mayo Clinic has shown how you can lose 33 pounds a year and not even go to a gym.

It turns out that the real key to weight loss isn't the amount of time you spend on the treadmill, but rather the amount of time you spend pacing and fidgeting, reports The Associated Press. Restlessness seems to play a bigger role in whether we are fat or thin than previously understood.

The study: The Mayo Clinic researchers recruited 10 mildly obese and 10 lean people. They were provided with special underwear, which used technology developed for fighter jet control panels, reports AP. Sensors were embedded in the undergarments to record the participants' postures and movements every half-second for 24 hours a day for 10 days. They lived their normal lives with one exception: All meals were eaten at a Rochester, Minn., hospital. All food on the plate had to be consumed so the calorie intake for each participant was identical.

In the second phase of the study, the thin volunteers were given an extra 1,000 calories a day for 10 additional days just so they would gain weight. At the same time, the obese volunteers' meals wer

e cut by 1,000 calories a day so they would lose weight.

About 150 million lines of data were collected from the special sensors in the underwear. Levine told AP that this is the first time so much hard data have been compiled to show the different activity levels between lean and overweight people.

The results: Those who were obese had a tendency to sit a lot more than their lean counterparts--about 150 minutes more a day on average. Those who are lean burned 350 more calories a day just by pacing and fidgeting.

The takeaway: If overweight people could match the restless behavior of their thin friends, it would work out to a weight loss of about 33 pounds a year. No gym required.

"I think our study is a beacon of hope, because 50 years ago our biology was the same, but obesity was not prevalent in America," lead study author and endocrinologist James Levine told AP. "If we can revert to the activity levels of 50 years ago, we have the potential to reverse our obesity." Levine credits--or blames--our natural incentive to move or sit on brain chemistry, something that is very individual.

The study findings were reported in the journal Science.