Once you get fat, you never go back. That is the nugget of wisdom that can be taken from a recent study published in the American Journal of Public Health , which found that the likelihood of an obese person attaining an average body weight is 1 in 210 for men and 1 in 123 for women, jumping to 1 in 1,290 for men and 1 in 677 for women with severe obesity .
The study was funded by the the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), which monitored the weight of 278,982 volunteers, 129,194 being male and 149,788 being female, by referencing electronic health records from 2004 to 2014. The team investigated the likelihood of obese people attaining a normal weight or a five percent reduction in body weight. Patients who underwent bariatric surgery were not involved in the study.
