(HealthDay News) -- Obese women report that several mental barriers keep them from exercising to lose weight, according to a new study.

Researchers from the Center for Obesity Research and Education and the department of kinesiology at Temple University looked at data collected from 278 women who were enrolled in a year-long physical activity encouragement study.

The women completed a questionnaire when the study began and during three- and 12-month follow-up assessments. The questionnaire dealt with mental barriers to exercise, including:

* Feeling self-conscious.

(HealthDay News) -- The inhaled steroids that are often used to treat asthma don't work as well in the overweight or obese, new research shows.

In fact, the treatments are 40 percent less effective in these patients than in those of a healthy weight, said study author Dr. E. Rand Sutherland, an associate professor of medicine at National Jewish Health in Denver.

"The combination of obesity and asthma appears to do something to limit the pathways by which steroids reduce inflammation," he said.

MONDAY, Aug. 11 (HealthDay News) -- Some obese people don't seem to be at increased risk for heart disease, while some normal-weight people have a number of heart disease risk factors, according to two studies.

In the first study, German researchers analyzed 314 people, ages 18 to 69, and divided them into four groups: normal weight, overweight, obese but still sensitive to insulin, and obese with insulin resistance.

Want to get rid of some fat cells as you age? Fat chance.

You're stuck with the number of fat cells you have acquired by about age 20, a new study finds.

Researchers have known that people gain and lose weight at least in part by changing how much fat is in their fat cells. The new finding is particularly important for obese people, who the researchers say can have twice as many fat cells as their lean counterparts.

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TUESDAY, May 27 (HealthDay News) -- In what may be the first good news in the battle against obesity among America's children, federal researchers report that the latest data suggest that the number of overweight kids may be leveling off.

However, experts caution there's still much to be done to improve the health of American children because the number of youngsters who are overweight today is still triple what it was in the 1960s and 1970s.

THURSDAY, March 13 (HealthDay News) -- Just 10 minutes to 30 minutes of exercise a day can improve the quality of life for sedentary, overweight or obese women, American researchers suggest.