This is the age when you are most at risk of becoming obese

18-24 year olds are four times more likely to become obese or overweight in the next 10 years than 65-74 year olds, according to a new study from theUniversity College from London. The age factor is thus much more determining than other variables such as socio-professional category, sex, or ethnicity.

Researchers looked at medical data from more than 2 million adults in England between 1998 and 2016 to study the risk of weight changes at different ages and between different groups. They thus calculated that the risk of passing into a BMI category (body mass index) over 10 years for white men is 40% for people aged 18-24, and 25%, 18% and 10% respectively for 25-34 years, 45-54 years and 65-74 years . Surprisingly, social level plays only a small role, with a risk of becoming overweight of 44% for young men. the most disadvantaged, against 40% on average.

An online tool to calculate your risk of becoming obese

The authors of the article, published in the journal The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, have established an online tool to calculate their risk of weight change over the next 1, 5 and 10 years based on their age, sex, height and socio-economic characteristics. For a white woman of 70 kg and 1.60 m and aged 35 to 44 years, we obtain a risk of overweight of 36%.

« Young people are going through big changes in their lives. They start working, go to college or leave home for the first time. The habits they develop during these years will persist into adulthood. », Warns Claudia Langenberg, co-author of the study. It is therefore particularly important to conduct awareness campaigns aimed at this public in order to avoid a general obesity epidemic.

Becoming an adult leads to a decrease in physical activity

AFP Relaxnews article published on 01/30/2020

This transition, coming out of adolescence to adulthood, would be a delicate period, an important milestone for young people when they embark on a course of long studies or get a first job and enter working life. . These new statutes are not without consequences, they would lead to a decrease in activity physique and therefore promote weight gain, according to two meta-analyzes.

Entry into adulthood often corresponds to important transitional phases: for example, leaving high school once you have obtained your baccalaureate and engaging in graduate studies or enter the vast world of work. But these changes would not be without effect on our physical health, warn researchers from the University of Cambridge (England), authors of a meta-analysis bringing together 19 longitudinal observational studies collected from six data base different digital.

The work analyzed focused on adiposity (excess fat in the body), diet and physical activity during these important stages in the life of young people aged 15 to 35 (first job, studies, childbirth, etc. etc). The work was carried out at the Center for Research on Diet and Physical Activity (Cedar) in Cambridge.

A first job or long studies promote weight gain

First observation of the study published in Obesity Reviews : entering the world of work would lead to a drop in physical activity (moderate or intense) average of seven minutes per day. This decrease appears to be greater in men than in women (16.4 minutes compared to 6.7 minutes per day). This change would be even more important among students enrolled in university, for whom the overall level of daily physical activity drops by 11.4 minutes. Several previous studies have, moreover, mentioned a weight gain increased at the end of high school or at the end of university studies.

« Children and adolescents evolve in a relatively protected environment, with a healthy diet and an incentive to exercise in schools, but this data suggests that pressures college, employment and childcare lead to behavior changes that are likely to be bad for health long-term Says Dr Eleanor Winpenny, researcher at Cedar and the Epidemiology Unit at Cambridge University.

A second study carried out by the same team of researchers and also published in Obesity Reviews has shown that becoming a parent could also greatly promote weight gain, especially in mothers (only one study looked at fathers), at a rate of 1.3 kg more than in childless women for a period of period of 5 to 6 years.