The chance of attaining a normal body weight after becoming obese is very slim, according to a recent study.
Researchers at King's College London found that the chance of an obese person returning to normal body weight is 1 in 210 for men and 1 in 124 for women. Those chances increase to 1 in 1,290 for men and 1 in 677 for women with severe obesity, BBC News reported.
"Once an adult becomes obese, it is very unlikely that they will return to a healthy body weight," Dr. Alison Fildes, first author of the study, said in a statement. "New approaches are urgently needed to deal with this issue."
For the study, researchers collected and analyzed data from nearly 279,000 men and women, Medical Daily reported. They tracked their weight using electronic health records from 2004 to 2014 to look at the probability of obese patients attaining normal weight or a 5 percent reduction in body weight; patients who received bariatric surgery were excluded from the study.
They found that the annual chance of obese patients achieving 5 percent weight loss was 1 in 12 for men and 1 in 10 for women. For those people who achieved 5 percent weight loss, 53 percent regained this weight within two years and 78 percent had regained the weight within five years.
"Losing 5 to 10 per cent of your body weight has been shown to have meaningful health benefits and is often recommended as a weight loss target. These findings highlight how difficult it is for people with obesity to achieve and maintain even small amounts of weight loss," Fildes said. "Obesity treatments should focus on preventing overweight and obese patients gaining further weight, while also helping those that do lose weight to keep it off. More importantly, priority needs to be placed on preventing weight gain in the first place."
The findings are detailed in the American Journal of Public Health.
