Health: Use Rmr, Lose Lbs

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By Mary Carmichael

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It's just not fair. Here you are on the treadmill with yet another futile New Year's resolution to lose weight, and your skinny friend is snarfing down brownies. What's she got that you don't? Try good genes--and a high resting metabolic rate, which makes her body burn calories faster. At least now there's something you can do about it. A small group of health providers and gyms, including the nationwide chain Bally Total Fitness, is offering sessions with a new inhaler-like device that measures your RMR--the number of calories you burn per day--faster than you can say "Atkins diet." Breathe into the BodyGem for a few minutes, get your magic number, eat fewer calories than that number and you're on the way to weight loss. Exercise will increase your RMR, so you'll need to use the BodyGem to track it. That kind of plan wasn't practical before; the physician-only RMR measuring equipment was too cumbersome. Now the only drawback is that you'll look ridiculous breathing into the device. (But think about how great you might look a few months later.)

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