It's also no secret that the long-recommended advice to eat less
and exercise more has done little to curb the inexorable rise in
weight. No one likes to feel deprived or leave the table hungry,
and the notion that one generally must eat less to control body
weight really doesn't cut it for most people. The new research,
by five nutrition and public health experts at Harvard
University, is by far the most detailed long-term analysis of
the factors that influence weight gain, involving 120,877 men
and women who were healthy and not obese at the start of the
study. The study participants - nurses and doctors, in the
Nurses' Health Study, Nurses' Health Study II and the Health
Professionals Follow-up Study - were followed for 12 to 20
years. The analysis, published in The New England Journal of
Medicine, examined how an array of factors influenced weight
gain or loss during each four-year period of the study. The
average participant gained 3.35 pounds (1.5 kg) every four
years, for a total weight gain of 16.8 po