Obesity: Obese Men and Women Have a Low Chance of Recovering Normal Weight

First Posted: Jul 17, 2015 09:20 AM EDT

It turns out that there's a low chance of an obese person recovering their normal body weight. Scientists have found that the chances for obese men is one in 210 and for women is one in 124. The findings suggest that current weight management programs should be reassessed.

In this latest study, the researchers tracked the weight of 278,982 participants using electronic health records from 2004 to 2014. The study looked 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.

So what did they find? The annual chance of obese patients achieving five percent weight loss was 1 in 12 for men and 1 in 10 for women. For those people who achieved five percent weight loss, 53 percent regained this weight within two years and 78 percent had regained the weight within five years.

Overall, only 1,283 men and 2,245 women with a BMI of 30 to 35 reached their normal body weight. That's an annual probability of 1 in 210 for men and 1 in 124 for women.

"Losing 5 to 10 percent of your body weight has been shown to have meaningful health benefits and is often recommended as a weight loss target," said Alison Fildes, one of the researchers, in a news release. "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 programs access via their GP. This evidence suggests the current system is not working for the vast majority of obese patients."

The findings reveal that some other system may have to be used to help obese patients. This is especially important since obesity has been associated with other diseases.

The findings are published in the American Journal of Public Health.