Weight and Exercise

* Whatever happened to taking responsibility? In the final paragraph of your article (March 9), Dr. Rudolph Leibel states “the take-home message is that (obesity) is not a question of willpower or behavior.” Unfortunately, Leibel seems to have misrepresented the results of his own study. Perhaps it was to ease the pain of the true message: that exercise plays the major role in maintaining muscle mass and raising metabolism.

In avoiding emphasizing this aspect of his study, Leibel does a great disservice to millions of obese individuals who could successfully lose and keep off the body fat if they took the appropriate action. Weight loss and/or maintenance has always been about willpower and behavior, whether it’s a behavioral change in eating habits or the willpower to exercise more (and certainly more than the paltry examples mentioned in your article). This is not to say that everyone should feel obligated to maintain an abnormally svelte physique at whatever cost. There’s no arguing that genetics does play a significant role in determining body type, fat distribution and basal metabolism. Still, this “study” and the discovery of the “obese gene” a few months ago are two more examples of science finding ways to help us blame anyone but ourselves for our condition. Thanks, but no thanks.

MARK SISSON

Santa Monica