Want to lose weight? Exercise. Help kick depression? Again, exercise. Increase productivity? Ditto. Sleep better? Improve your quality of life after cancer? Even have a better sex life? Exercise, exercise, exercise. With all those benefits -- and more -- why are Americans getting fatter?

According to a new report -- "F as in Fat" -- from the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, adult obesity increased last year in 28 states. In 38 states, including Pennsylvania, more than 25 percent of adults are obese, meaning they have a body mass index of 30 or higher.

Poor Americans, the report said, are fatter than rich folks. Adult Latinos are fatter than whites, but thinner than blacks. Latino children, however, are fatter than African-American children, while white kids are, relatively speaking, thinnest. Pennsylvania's adult obesity rate is 26.7 percent, 22nd in the nation (the state's rate of obese and overweight children is 29.7 percent, 32nd in the nation).

Six Southern states had adult obesity rates of more than 30 percent. Mississippi -- at 33.8 percent, more than two percentage points more than its nearest competitors -- weighed in as the most obese state in the nation.

The only thing growing faster than American waistlines is the extent of the problem. In 1990, no state had an obesity rate above 20 percent, while in 1980 the national obesity rate was 15 percent, half the current rate.

The problem is complex. Poverty, culture, advertising, ubiquitous and cheap fast food, huge restaurant portions, TV, computers, video games, the lack of safe streets and parks in many neighborhoods, and the unavailability of grocery stores in some areas all play a part and sometimes are beyond the control of individuals.

But other than people with medical problems that cause obesity, nearly all of us can control how much we eat, if not the food's nutritional value, as well as how much we exercise.

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