She said researchers had long assumed that “once people had become overweight or developed obesity, people didn’t really lose weight and certainly not sustained it.”
The team also asked, she said, “can we try and say something positive about health that isn’t just this kind of like doom and gloom?”
The researchers used the British 1958 National Child Development Study, which has followed about 17,500 people born during one week in 1958. Of those, 6,309 took part in a health check in their early 60s, according to the report.
The team compared each person’s highest weight between ages 23 and 42 with their weight between ages 50 and 55. Researchers sorted people by whether they gained or lost more than 5% of their body weight and kept the change. For a 200-pound person, 5% equals 10 pounds.
To track heart health, the team compared blood tests and blood pressure readings at ages 44 and 62 with those of people who maintained a healthy weight.
“We know everyone’s heart health is kind of going to get a little bit worse over that time because you are aging and that’s expected,” Bridger-Staatz said. The question, she said, was, “Does it slow the rate at which people’s heart health is getting worse?”
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