Study Shows How Likely U.S. Adults Are To Gain, Lose Or Stay Same Weight.

2001 DEC 6 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- It's about as easy to lose weight as it is to get rich, according to a University of Michigan study that tracked weight changes among a nationally representative sample of more than 10,000 adults over a 13-year period.

According to the study, conducted by the U-M Institute for Social Research, the world's largest academic survey and research organization, about 51% of adult men in the middle ranges of body mass index in 1986 - that's a weight of about 175 pounds at a height 5'10" - were in more or less the same weight category in 1999. Over this 13-year-period, about 27% had gained a substantial amount of weight and 21% had lost a substantial amount.

For adult women, about 55% of those in the middle ranges of body mass index in 1986 (a weight of about 150 pounds at a height of 5'5") were in about the same weight category in 1999, while about 28% had gained a substantial amount of weight and 17% had lost a substantial amount.

"Our analysis confirms anecdotal accounts that there is substantial weight mobility - the yo-yo diet effect - over the adult life course," says Frank Stafford, the U-M researcher who directs the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Aging. "We compared the extent of changes in body mass index and household wealth mobility over this time period, and found that both are of the same order of magnitude. That's understandable, since people often gain both weight and net worth as part of the aging process."

In the study, which was also funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Development, Stafford and colleagues Yong-Seong Kim and Katherine McGonagle found that the U.S. population as whole has been experiencing an "obesity drift" rather than an obesity ...