Obese Patients Unlikely to Reach Weight Loss Goals for Normal Weight

• comments
• 
• 

According to a new British study, people who are considered obese will have a hard time shedding the excess pounds in order to be of normal weight.

Researchers from King's College of London have found that only a handful of obese adults can return to their normal weight. In morbidly obese adults, the chances are even lesser. The findings were published in the American Journal of Public Health.

For the study, electronic health records of nearly 130,000 women and nearly 150,000 women were looked into by the researchers to determine the "probability of obese patients attaining normal weight or a 5% reduction in body weight." Excluded from the study are patients who have received bariatric weight loss surgery.

They found that only one in 12 men and one in 10 women are capable losing five percent of their body weight every year. In that group, more than half of them reacquired the weight they lost within two years and more than a quarter have gained back their weight within five years.

This means that for those with a body mass index (BMI) of 30-35 in the study, only one in 210 men and one in 124 women were able to reach their normal body weight. However, for those who are severely obese, with 40 BMI and above, the likelihood of shedding weight decreased dramatically with only one in 1,290 for men and one in 677 for women.

"Once an adult becomes obese, it is very unlikely that they will return to a healthy body weight. New approaches are urgently needed to deal with this issue," said study co-author Dr. Alison Fildes of King's College London, via Eureka Alert. She added that their study revealed how difficult it is for obese people to lose five to 10 percent of their body weight and maintain it.

Due to this, it could be said that weight loss strategies aren't working for those who are affected by the rising obesity epidemic in the United States.

Dr. Fildes added that instead of waiting for people to be obese, strategies to prevent such outcomes should be in place to offset the difficulty of shedding the pounds that are hard to shake off, reports Medical Daily.

"Treatment needs to focus on stopping people gaining more weight and maintaining even small levels of weight loss," Dr. Fildes said in a report by BBC. "Current strategies that focus on cutting calories and boosting physical activity aren't working for most patients to achieve weight loss and maintain that.

Dr. Fildes added: "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."