One Month of Fast Food and No Exercise Can Change Our Bodies For Years

Call it Revenge of the Cheeseburgers. The LA Times reports that Swedish researchers found that just four weeks of eating two fast food meals a day and no exercise can leave us fatter and less healthy as long as two and a half years later. The researchers studied 18
healthy, young adults with normal body weights who were told to limit their physical activity to 5,000
steps a day, and to increase their caloric intake by 70 percent for four weeks.
Most chose to do that by eating two fast-food meals a day. When the
researchers compared the heavy eaters with a control group, they found that those who increased their food
intake for four weeks gained an average of 14 pounds, and that after six months only
one-third had returned to within one pound of
their initial body weight. The researchers found that after one year, the gluttony group was
an average of 3.3 pounds heavier than before their four-week binge
while there was no change in the body weight of the control group. The
binge group also had an increased fat mass and higher LDL cholesterol
levels.  After two and a half years, the group that binged for four weeks
had continued to gain weight while weights in the control group were
stable.

Read more in the LA Times.