A group of researchers in London have been following the lives of more than 1,200 Brits for 60 years now. Just imagine that, even back in 1946 people were gathering in laboratories to brain storm about obesity.

The findings that they stumbled upon though are important, especially if you’re a yo-yo dieter. When they tracked people’s change in body weight, and measured their cardiovascular disease risk factors, they found that it was the amount of time spent being overweight that was important for their heart health.

If a person lost weight, changing categories on the body mass index scale, going from obese to overweight, or overweight to normal weight, then they had a better outlook concerning risk factors for heart disease like blood pressure and artery health.

But the new finding here was that if you successfully lost weight but then later regained it, you were  still better off, because you had then spent less time being a heavier weight, and you were then at a lesser risk of developing heart disease.

The obvious conclusion here is that it’s best to lose weight and keep it off, accumulating time at your new body weight.

But if you’ve given up with losing weight because you’ve never stuck to it in the past, and have always gained it back then don’t give up, because your past weight loss failures have actually been successes. You’ve already accumulated time at a lower body weight, and according to these researchers, you’ve already done your health a favour.

So there is a point in trying again, and it’s never too late to do so, every change, whether permanent or temporary is a success.

Faye Prior (Researcher)

Source

Charakida et al., (2014). Lifelong patterns of BMI and phenotype in individuals aged 60-64 years old in the 1946 British birth cohort study. The Lancet, doi:10.1016/S2213-8587(14)70103-2