I come across an article regarding a study conducted by Qibin Qi, a researcher at Harvard School of Public Health. Based on his research, apparently we should blame our inherited genes for obesity, at least for 50% of the cases. Since we can't really change our parents, it makes it particularly difficult to fight the weight. In this study, Qi and his colleagues proposed a next-to-the-best solution.
They analyzed data from 12,000 people, measured how many "fat genes" each participant had, then looked at his or her body mass index (BMI). The studies included also data about how much time people spent watch TV and walking.
The motivating math: those who briskly walked an hour a day had a 0.06 decrease in BMI and those who spent two hours a day in front of TV had a 0.03 increase. Every 0.2 increase in BMI is related to 1 pound in weight.
We know from a long time that exercising help weight loss. But it is still interesting to see some quantitative numbers.