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The calories people burn in everyday activities, such as standing, pacing and cleaning, are a much more important factor in obesity than scientists had realized. But some people do not seem hard-wired to move around much.
That is the conclusion of a study in today's issue of Science that finds overweight ''couch potatoes'' sit about 2 hours more a day than normal-weight couch potatoes.
The heavier people studied were not sitting more just because of their weight, the study says. ''Their movements were fixed, like it was biologically driven,'' says endocrinologist James Levine of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. ''Many of us are programmed not to move much. When you offer some people a comfy chair, they'll take it.''
Mayo Clinic researchers recruited 20 sedentary people: 10 obese and 10 normal weight. They wore movement monitors for 10 days.
* The obese people sat for an average of 164 minutes more a day.
* The leaner people moved around doing basic activities, such as puttering about the house, for 152 more minutes a day. They used about 350 more calories a day.
''This is not a 'fidget more' story. It's a 'get off your bottom' story,'' Levine says. What makes a difference is getting up and moving, not just tapping your toes, he says.
Researchers first speculated that if the heavy people lost weight, they might move more, and if the lean ones gained weight, they might be more sedentary.
Then researchers adjusted calorie intake to cause weight changes. The obese lost an average of 15 pounds; the lean people gained 10. But both groups did the same amount of sitting or moving.
There may be ''a brain-chemical difference between people because of their genes,'' Levine says. A genetic trait may be to blame, agrees Eric Ravussin of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge. ''Just telling people to sit less is going to lead to nowhere,'' he says. ''We have to redesign our environment so it's not as conducive to sitting.''
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