Obese men have only a one in 210 chance of attaining a healthy body weight, according to new research that suggests diet and exercise strategies are not effective in combating the obesity epidemic.
While obese women stand a slightly higher one in 124 chance, experts from King’s College London, who conducted the study, said that existing weight loss programmes in the UK were “not working for the vast majority of obese patients”.
The findings are based on the electronic health records of 279,000 people. People who were categorised as severely obese were even less likely to attain healthy weight – with a 1 in 1,290 chance among men and a one in 677 chance among women.
While a significant number of patients were able to lose five per cent of their weight, most regained it after only a few years.
Each year obese men have a one in 12 chance of achieving five per cent weight loss, rising to one in 10 among women. But 53 per cent of people who had achieved this regained the weight within a year, and after five years, only 22 per cent had maintained their weight loss.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...attaining-a-healthy-body-weight-10394887.html“The risk with findings like this is that people get despondent and think there is no hope,” she said. “We would say the key message in terms of public health policy is that we need to be focusing more on prevention because it is difficult to lose weight once you are obese.”
Pretty damning results of a comprehensive new study. That last part seems the most important: once an individual becomes obese it is extremely unlikely they'll be able to lose weight, so prevention is our best approach.
Mod Abuse:
Please note that the methodology of this study is notably flawed, and most importantly, the spin put on the data by the article is misleading.
The paper is looking at all obese people, not just those who are looking to lose weight. It assumes that most people want to lose weight, which is a fairly reasonable assumption in casual discussion, but not good enough for a robust study.
The paper is also looking at only a one year period, not a lifespan. This means that Obese men and women (regardless of effort) have an ~.5% chance of losing weight and reaching "normal" BMI weight classifications in any given year, according to these statistics.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=172182067&postcount=156