The data speak loudly. Weighing too much decreases your quantity and quality of life. Study Links Excess Weight to Risk of Heart Failure

Previously, researchers were aware that severe obesity was an independent risk factor for heart failure, but the new data show that being even moderately overweight increases one's chances of developing the condition -- and the more overweight someone is, the greater the risk. Obesity alone accounts for 14 percent of cases of heart failure in women and 11 percent in men, according to estimates in the study, which appears in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

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BMI can be approximated by multiplying weight in pounds by 703, then dividing by height in inches squared. A normal BMI is 18.5 to 24.9. Among study participants, overweight women (BMI between 25.0 and 29.9) had a 50 percent greater risk of heart failure than women of normal weight, and overweight men had a 20 percent greater risk than men of normal weight. In obese people of either sex (BMI of 30 or greater), heart failure risk was nearly twice that of normal-weight individuals.

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"If you really want to have a public health impact, you have to intervene on obesity" before heart failure or other conditions develop, Lenfant said. But "it's pretty darn hard," he added. "Because . . . in most instances, it is the result of things that people enjoy. It's part of the culture."

Americans love to eat. We have plentiful food. We can more easily eat the wrong foods than the right foods. Exercise does not fit into most Americans daily plans. Can our society correct itself like it has with a major decrease in cigarette smoking?