Impossible

 

 

 

"Bondage"

Canon G7x Mark II
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Mextures

[Forewarned: This is a Fat post. Tiresome, I know, but that's the world I find myself in presently.] I follow a young woman on Instagram that lost 265.5 lbs by doing bariatric surgery. Her husband had the same procedure recently and is entering the world of drastically reduced digestive system capacity. He's already lost over 25 lbs.. Anyway - She posted today a statistic that I found shocking: When an individual starts from a BMI over 35 (severely to morbidly obese), they have less than a 1% chance of losing enough weight without surgery or drugs to achieve a BMI in the normal range in two years.  Stunning innit?  I decided to try and validate her stats.  What I found was even more stunning. From a 2015 study published in the American Journal of Public Health: Objectives. We examined the probability of an obese person attaining normal body weight. Methods. We drew a sample of individuals aged 20 years and older from the United Kingdom’s Clinical Practice Research Datalink from 2004 to 2014. We analyzed data for 76 704 obese men and 99 791 obese women. We excluded participants who received bariatric surgery. We estimated the probability of attaining normal weight or 5% reduction in body weight. Results. During a maximum of 9 years’ follow-up, 1283 men and 2245 women attained normal body weight. In simple obesity (body mass index = 30.0–34.9 kg/m2), the annual probability of attaining normal weight was 1 in 210 for men and 1 in 124 for women, increasing to 1 in 1290 for men and 1 in 677 for women with morbid obesity (body mass index = 40.0–44.9 kg/m2). The annual probability of achieving a 5% weight reduction was 1 in 8 for men and 1 in 7 for women with morbid obesity. Conclusions. The probability of attaining normal weight or maintaining weight loss is low. Obesity treatment frameworks grounded in community-based weight management programs may be ineffective. So - lets take a male with a BMI of 40.2, which is what my BMI was when I weighed 305 lbs in 2010. According to the 2015 study, that person had a 1 in 1290 chance or expressed as a percentage, a .08% chance of losing enough weight to achieve a normal BMI (under 25), a success rate so vanishingly small as to not exist at all.   I mean - you could look at these numbers and come to the (very valid) conclusion that it's essentially impossible to reduce body mass. One could also start to realize that obese people can't all be lazy, ignorant, stupid, and greedy people like the Slenders portray us in popular culture. There must be something else at play. I believe there is - but that's a subject for another post.    Current weight/BMI - 193lbs / 25. A BMI of 25 is just slightly over a normal weight...  ~