Obese people ‘unlikely to return to normal body weight’

A new study has indicated that obese people have only a limited chance of eventually returning to a normal body weight.

The analysis of UK health records, led by King's College London, has revealed that the chance of an obese person attaining normal body weight is one in 210 for men and one in 124 for women, increasing to one in 1,290 for men and one in 677 for women with severe obesity.

Looking at data for 278,982 people, it was found that 53 percent of individuals who achieved five per cent weight loss regained this weight within two years, while 78 percent regained it within five years.

The study concluded that current obesity treatments are failing to achieve sustained weight loss for the majority of obese patients.

Professor Martin Gulliford, senior author from the Division of Health and Social Care Research at King's College London, said: "The greatest opportunity for stemming the current obesity epidemic is in wider-reaching public health policies to prevent obesity in the population."

The report recommended that future treatments should focus on preventing people from gaining weight in the first place, while also helping those that do lose weight to keep it off.