From WebMD: Getting Older Without Adding Extra Weight

A dietician was an the radio being interviewed about this study. It was sobering. She said (what we all know) that if a person in our culture is not proactive about watching portion sizes, food choices and getting more exercise… s/he is virtually guaranteed to gain weight.

She said that food is just sooooo available in North America and portion sizes are at their largest in history… and the vast majority of adults are sedentary. She also said that it is extremely common for adults to gain 1 lb a year from age 20-50...

* * * * * * *

Getting Older Without Adding Extra Weight
Creeping Weight Gain Adds Up Over the Years, Study Shows

By Miranda Hitti
Reviewed By Louise Chang, MD on Monday, October 03, 2005


Oct. 3, 2005 -- Want to keep extra weight off as you age? You might want to develop a strategy that lasts a lifetime.

In a lengthy study, many people who had a normal body mass index (BMI) in middle age eventually became overweight, and some became obese.

Consider these before-and-after results:

Between a tenth and a quarter became overweight in just four years.
More than half became overweight in 30 years.

The study appears in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The researchers included Ramachandran Vasan, MD, of the Framingham Heart Study.

Short-Term Trends

Vasan's study included more than 3,700 white men and women who were enrolled in the Framingham Heart Study.

Participants had their BMI measured at least twice, four years apart, during the 30-year study.

Middle-aged men packed on weight relatively quickly. Over four years, more than a quarter of the men with normal BMI became overweight. For men with normal and overweight BMI values, up to 9% became obese in four years.

A smaller percentage of women (14% to 19%) became overweight in four years' time. Between 5% and 7% of normal and overweight women became obese in four years, the study shows.

Long-Term Results

As the years gathered, so did the pounds. Here are the results over 30 years:

More than half of all participants became overweight.
About a quarter of participants became obese.
1 in 10 participants became severely obese.

Over the long haul, similar percentages of men and women became overweight or obese. People who were overweight when the study started were more likely to become obese.
"These estimates suggest that the future burden of obesity-associated diseases may be substantial," write the researchers. However, their report doesn't give details on participants' health.

Heart disease, some cancers, and osteoarthritis are among the conditions that have been linked to weight problems. Of course, not all overweight people have those health issues.

Study's Limits

BMI is calculated from height and weight. It isn't a perfect measure of fatness.
For instance, people often lose lean body mass as they age. That can raise body fat percentage while leaving BMI unchanged, the researchers note. Resistance training is one way to maintain or build muscle mass.

BMI also doesn't reflect shifts in the location of body fat. Past research has linked fat around the waist to health problems including heart disease and diabetes. It's not clear if that fat causes or just accompanies those problemsthose problems.

The study only tracked weight gain starting in middle age. Other age groups might have different results, write the researchers.

Lastly, since all participants were white, results aren't known for other racial and ethnic groups.

Lifelong Habit

Diet crazes come and go. Many health experts recommend making lasting changes instead of following the latest diet fads.

Your doctor can give you pointers. The U.S. government recommends these general steps for healthy living:

Get at least 30 minutes of physical activity five or more days per week.
Choose whole grains for at least half of the grains you eat.
Eat a mix of five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables daily.
Favor lean sources of protein (including leaner cuts of meat and poultry, fish, and beans).
Choose low-fat or fat-free dairy products.
Cut back on foods containing saturated fat, trans fats, and cholesterol.

Don't forget about calories. You've got to burn more calories than you consume to lose weight, so make your choices wisely.

Different news story on the same study. Insprires me to NOT be average!

* * * * *

Study: Most Will Be Fat Over the Long Haul
By ALEX DOMINGUEZ, Associated Press Writer
Mon Oct 3, 8:09 PM

BALTIMORE - Just when we thought we couldn't get any fatter, a new study that followed Americans for three decades suggests that over the long haul, 9 out of 10 men and 7 out of 10 women will become overweight.

Even if you are one of the lucky few who made it to middle age without getting fat, don't congratulate yourself _ keep watching that waistline.

Half of the men and women in the study who had made it well into adulthood without a weight problem ultimately became overweight. A third of those women and a quarter of the men became obese.

"You cannot become complacent, because you are at risk of becoming overweight," said Ramachandran Vasan, an associate professor of medicine at Boston University and the study's lead author.

He and other researchers studied data gathered from 4,000 white adults over 30 years. Participants were between the ages of 30 and 59 at the start, and were examined every four years. By the end of the study, more than 1 in 3 had become obese.

The study defined obesity as a body mass index, which is a commonly used height and weight comparison, of more than 30.

The findings, published Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, show obesity may be a greater problem than indicated by studies that look at a cross-section of the population at one point in time. Those so-called "snapshots" of obesity have found about 6 in 10 are overweight and about 1 in 3 are obese, Vasan said.

The findings also re-emphasize that people must continually watch their weight, Vasan said.

The research subjects were the children of participants in the long-running and often-cited Framingham Heart Study, which has been following the health of generations of Massachusetts residents.

Dr. Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, which supported the study, said the findings show "we could have an even more serious degree of overweight and obesity over the next few decades."

Susan Bartlett, an assistant professor of medicine and an obesity researcher at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said the study was one of the first to look at the risk of becoming overweight.

"The results are pretty sobering, really," said Bartlett, who was not involved in the research.

While the health risks of being obese are much more severe than being overweight, those who are overweight are much more likely to go on to become obese, Bartlett said.

The study shows Americans live in an "environment in which it's hard not to become overweight or obese. Unless people actively work against that, that's what's most likely to happen to them."

Obesity raises the risk of heart disease, some cancers, diabetes and arthritis, and being overweight raises blood pressure and cholesterol, which in turn can raise the risk of heart disease.

The number of deaths linked to obesity has been heavily debated. Earlier this year the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said obesity caused only about 25,814 deaths annually in the United States _ far fewer than the 365,000 deaths the agency had earlier reported. Other scientists have disagreed with the revised conclusion, while organizations representing the food and restaurant industry think weight-related ills have been overstated.

As for the Framingham study, Mark Vander Weg, a Mayo Clinic psychologist who researches obesity but was not involved in the study, said it is one of a few to track a group of individuals over an extended period.

"What's particularly concerning is that these results actually may underestimate the risk of becoming overweight or obese among the general population" because minorities, who are at increased risk for obesity, were not included in the study, Vander Weg said.

Recent trends also suggest that people currently coming into middle age may be even more likely to become overweight or obese than those who were studied, Vander Weg said.

While more studies that include more diverse populations are needed, he said, the results "add to a growing body of evidence that makes it increasingly apparent that more effective prevention and treatment strategies are urgently needed."