London - People who pile on the kilos hardly ever lose them, British researchers have found.
Just one in every 210 obese men and one in 124 obese women manage to return to a healthy body weight, according to a decade-long study. The findings are a stark warning of the lasting consequences of putting on weight, experts said.
Fewer than one in ten of the men and women in the study managed to lose five percent or more of their body weight in a year, let alone return to a normal size.
Study author Dr Alison Fildes, of King’s College London, said: “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.”
Her team tracked the fluctuating weight of nearly 280 000 British men and women between 2004 and 2014. The findings, published in the American Journal of Public Health, suggest that even when someone does manage to shed weight, they are very unlikely to keep it off.
A third of the patients displayed yo-yo weight cycles, losing the kilos only to put them back on.
The chance of obese patients achieving a five percent weight loss in 12 months was one in 12 for men and one in ten for women.
For those who eventually achieved a five percent weight loss, 53 percent regained this weight within two years and 78 percent had regained the weight within five years.
The researchers found that men who are obese – categorised as those with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 to 35 – had a 0.47 percent chance of achieving a healthy weight, a BMI of below 25. Obese women had a 0.8 percent chance.
Those who were even fatter have a much slimmer chance of losing the kilos. Men who were severely obese, with a BMI of over 40, had just a 0.08 percent chance of achieving a healthy weight – just one in 1 290. And only one in 677 severely obese women – 0.15 percent – was likely to drop to a normal size.
Dr Fildes said current public health strategies were dismally failing to address the problem.
Three quarters of men and two thirds of women in the UK will be overweight or obese by 2030, according to the World Health Organisation. The problem is already resulting in soaring rates of type 2 diabetes and is predicted to have a similar impact on the numbers of people with heart disease, strokes and cancer.
Dr Fildes added: “These findings highlight how difficult it is for people with obesity to achieve and maintain even small amounts of weight loss.
“The main treatment options offered to obese patients in the UK are weight management programmes accessed via their GP. This evidence suggests the current system is not working for the vast majority of obese patients. Priority needs to be placed on preventing weight gain in the first place.”
Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, said: “The authors are quite correct.It is the devil’s own job to get the obese person down to size and maintain it unless he or she has a personal point to prove.
“There are examples, therefore, of women shedding kilos because they are getting married. The likelihood is, however, that once hitched they will put their weight back on.
“A multi-million-pound dieting business exists due to obese people yo-yoing from one diet to another in the hope that such-and-such a regimen will do the trick. It very rarely does.
“Prevention is key. It has been for years, with messages aimed at people not to get fat in the first place – but an increasing number don’t listen.”
The findings come as a second study revealed that well-meaning grandparents may be contributing to the rise in childhood obesity.
Researchers found grandparents overfeed their grandchildren, giving them sugary snacks and drinks, and don’t let them carry out physical chores. Children cared for by their grandparents were twice as likely to be overweight or obese as children mainly looked after by their parents or other adults.
University of Birmingham researchers questioned 500 parents of children in the Chinese cities of Guangzhou and Hechi. Writing in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, co-author Professor Peymane Adab said: “Conflicting child care beliefs and practice between grandparents and parents, and between grandparents and school teachers, are felt to undermine efforts to promote healthy behaviours in children.”
Daily Mail