Study: Obese Individuals Unlikely to Achieve Normal Weight

The chance of obese patients attaining and maintaining normal body weight is 1 in 210 for men and 1 in 124 for women, according to a recent study.

The chances increase to 1 in 1290 and 1 in 677 for severely obese men and women, respectively.
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In order to examine the efficacy of current weight management programs that focus on diet and exercise, researchers analyzed the medical records of 278,982 patients from the United Kingdom’s Clinical Practice Research Datalink between 2004 and 2014.

Primary outcomes were the achievement of normal body weight or a 5% reduction in total body weight.

During a maximum of 9 years of follow-up, 1283 men and 2245 women with a starting BMI of 30-35 achieved normal body weight. The chance of losing 5% of body weight was 1 in 12 for men and 1 in 10 for women, but, overall, 53% regained the weight within 2 years and 78% regained the weight within 5 years.

“These findings raise questions concerning whether current obesity treatment frameworks, grounded in weight management programs accessed through primary care, may be expected to achieve clinically relevant and sustained reductions in BMI for the vast majority of obese patients and whether they could be expected to do so in the future,” researchers concluded.

“The lack of sustained BMI reductions could be driven by low intervention uptake rates or their lack of effectiveness.”

—Michael Potts

Reference:

Fildes A, Charlton J, Rudisill C, et al. Probability of an obese person attaining normal body weight: cohort study using electronic health records. American Journal of Public Health. July 2015 [epub ahead of print]. doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302773.