Gyms across the country will be packed in the new year with people sticking, however briefly, to their New Year’s resolution to lose weight. Most of them do not know that the cards are stacked against them and that weight loss is much more complicated than working out and not eating dessert.

Years into the obesity epidemic, millions of Americans have tried to lose weight, and millions of them have failed to do so long term.

It’s so serious now that close to 40 percent of Americans are obese. The average woman in the United States today weighs about 168 pounds, or roughly the same as an average man in 1960.

Not that that guys’ waists haven’t ballooned, too. Men have gained on average nearly 30 pounds since John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961.

Now, despite people’s concerted efforts, obesity is at its highest level ever, with about 40 percent of U.S. adults and 18.5 percent of children, considered obese. This is itself an increase of about 30 […]

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