Most of us are used to thinking of excess body fat as something to lose. However, last week scientists announced a new discovery related to a type of body fat you may actually want to have more of. This special fat is called “brown fat” and the new discoveries have raised a lot of interest in potential new obesity treatments.

It’s long been known that there are two different kinds of body fat, brown fat and white fat. Brown fat is more metabolically active than white fat so it actually burns more calories than the white stuff does. However, until now scientists thought that brown fat wasn’t all that important in people because we have relatively little of it compared to smaller animals like mice. The new research shows that many adults actually have significant amounts of brown fat. Of course, scientists want to use this information to develop drugs that will activate the brown fat and thereby help people burn more calories and lose weight. Or I suppose if someone didn’t want to take drugs (that are not even developed yet), they could move to Antarctica; it appears that cold climates are what activate “brown fat.” Perhaps the real obesity problem is global warming!

All kidding aside, there are certainly individuals out there who need medication or surgery to assist with weight loss. For them, diet and exercise are not enough. But for the rest of us, who upon hearing news about potential weight loss breakthroughs and get a gleam in our eye because we start thinking, “Maybe I won’t have to eat healthy and exercise anymore and could still be thin…oh how wonderful that would be;” I say there is a flaw in our thinking.

The real problem with this thinking is that we often equate being thin with being healthy and being overweight with being unhealthy. Granted, there are many overweight, unhealthy individuals. They are unhealthy not just because they are overweight, but also because they do not engage in healthy behaviors such as making healthy food choices and engaging in regular physical activity. There are also many thin, unhealthy individuals for the exact same reasons.

So the take home lesson is this: Even if we could take some magic pill that activates our brown fat to rev up our metabolism, in order to achieve optimal health we still would need to watch what we eat and engage in regular physical activity. And the great thing about living a healthy lifestyle is that the major side effects are looking and feeling better!