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While many people exert great effort to maintain a strict diet as well, a recent study indicates that continuous movement throughout the day may be a more effective means of losing weight. The study suggests that fidgeting may be a big factor in determining whether you are fat or thin.

The study, released on August 14 and conducted by the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Obesity Center, involved sending a brain signal to both lean and fat rats. The lean rats were shown to be sensitive to the brain signal and it made them restless and fidgety. The fat rats showed no reaction whatsoever.

As the study noted, "The results point to a biological basis for being a couch potato."

Under the study, researches bred two colonies of rats. First, they matched lean rats with other lean rats until they produced a strain of obesity-resistant rats. Then they matched fat rats with other fats rats until they bred a strain of obesity prone rats. Once they had the two strains, they provided each with the same amount of food. They found that the obesity-resistant rats continued to remain lean while the obesity-prone fats got fat.

They then attached motion detectors to both sets of rats. The motion detectors indicated that the obesity-prone rats tended to move around a lot while the obesity-prone rats did not. The study said this characteristic was evident even from an early age or even before the obesity-prone rats became fat.

According to researchers, this experiment could suggest that if people became more active, they would probably not get fat.

In addition, the medical researchers also found out that lean rats' brains were far more sensitive to a chemical known as orexin which, when injected into their heads, caused the lean rats to become more fidgety than they were before. The same chemical was injected into the brains of the fat rats and did not show any effects.

Doctors said orexin can also be used on human brains and that drug similar to orexin could be used to make people more active in an effort to make them lose weight. But as one observer said, why do they have to create a drug that makes people fidget when fidgeting is something people can do on their own, with or without the drug.