The chances that an obese individual will be able to return to normal weight is “slim” at best, according to new research led by a experts from King’s College London and published in a recent edition of the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH).
In fact, according to BBC News reports, the study authors found that a man has just a one-in-210 chance of shedding excess pounds and returning to a normal weight range over the course of a year, while a woman’s odds are slightly better but still not great – they have a one-in-124 chance.
Lead investigator Dr. Alison Fildes and her colleagues monitored the weight of 278,982 men and women between 2004 and 2014 using electronic health records. During that period, only 1,283 of the obese men and 2,245 of the obese women were able to return to a normal body weight.
Those statistics applied to people with a Body Mass Index of at least 30 to 35, the British media outlet noted. When the criteria was applied to the morbidly obese (those who have BMI of 40 to 45), the odds soared to just to one-in-1,290 for men and one-in-677 for women, they added.
Calling for more emphasis on obesity prevention
Dr. Fildes told BBC News that the statistics for losing five percent of total bodyweight were more encouraging, as one-in-12 men and one-in-10 women managed to accomplish this feat in one year (although most of those individuals had regained the weight within five years).
Furthermore, more than one-third of the men and women studied experienced cycles of weight loss and weight gain during the course of the study, the researchers reported. They said that the findings show that current strategies to help obese patients are not working, and that there has to be a greater emphasis on preventing people from becoming obese to begin with.
“Treatment needs to focus on stopping people gaining more weight and maintaining even small levels of weight loss,” Dr. Fildes told the UK news organization. “Current strategies that focus on cutting calories and boosting physical activity aren’t working for most patients to achieve weight loss and maintain that. The greatest opportunity for fighting the obesity epidemic might be in public health policies to prevent it in the first place at a population level.”
Co-author and King’s College London professor Martin Gulliford agreed, adding that the “greatest opportunity for stemming the current obesity epidemic is in wider-reaching public health policies to prevent obesity in the population.”
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