With technology making our lives easier on almost a daily basis, someone had to come up with the idea.

Lose weight and become more fit at the same time, all without dieting or exercise. Just take a pill.

It sounds like something you’d find in an ad, or bannered across the cover, of one of the supermarket tabloids, along with the latest misadventures of celebrities and space aliens.

But researchers at respected institutions now are working on such a drug, so far restricted to laboratory mice.

Local people who work with dieting and exercise said that until such a “miracle pill” has been proven in people, it’s best to stick to the tried and true methods – eat healthy food, control your portions, and exercise regularly.

A recent study said the drug in question might help treat obesity, diabetes, and people with medical conditions that keep them from exercising, according to the Associated Press.

“We have exercise in a pill,” said Ron Evans, an author of the study. “With no exercise, you can take a drug and chemically mimic it.”

Evans, of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, reported the results in a paper published online by the journal Cell.

According to the study, sedentary mice that took the drug for four weeks burned more calories and had less fat than untreated mice. When tested on a treadmill, they could run about 44 percent farther and 23 percent longer.

On mice that did exercise training, a second drug made their workouts more effective at boosting endurance. After a month of exercising while taking that drug, the mice could run 68 percent longer and 70 percent farther than mice that exercised but did not take the drug.

Both drugs have been studied by researchers for other uses. The no-exercise drug is in late-stage human testing by Schering-Plough Corp. on Kenilworth, N.J., which developed it to see if it can prevent a complication of heart bypass surgery.

Reservatrol, a substance being studied for anti-aging effects, also has been reported to enable mice to run farther before exhaustion.

But the drugs in the new study appear to act more specifically on a process in muscles that boosts endurance,” according to the AP story.

Dr. Mark Giese, chairman of the Department of Health and Kinesiology at Northeastern State University, said he has yet to see evidence of a substitute for exercise as the best method of living healthy and keeping fit.

“The idea, of course, is to make the status of your muscle tissue better,” he said. “We want people to eat better, balanced portions yet we want them to be able to exercise.”