Post-holiday guilt and the risk of marginal weight gains （593 words）

By Charles Wallace

We have all had the experience of returning home from a wonderful holiday abroad only to find that our trousers no longer fit.

The need to buy a bigger pair is, however, not the only downside of eating and drinking too much — a study says that being even marginally overweight can increase your risk of dying prematurely, especially if you are a man.

The study, published in The Lancet, was one of the largest ever conducted, involving body mass index data from more than 10m people in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. It provides further evidence that the obesity epidemic — well known in the US and UK — has spread to east Asia as well.

The study's authors said they were concerned that recent research papers had suggested that being overweight but not obese was somehow protective against disease. The results of this meta-analysis show those reports were incorrect, they said.

“We were able to use much stricter methodology to show that actually being overweight and slightly obese are associated with an increased risk of mortality,” said Emanuele Di Angelantonio, a lecturer at Cambridge university who worked on the Lancet study.

The analysis illustrated the health risks that obesity poses. Men who are 35 years old and have a normal weight have a 19 per cent risk of dying before age 70, while the number is only 11 per cent for women.

But when you add obesity to the equation, the risk for men rises to a 29 per cent chance of dying of all causes before age 70, while for women it rises to just 14 per cent. The excess risk for men caused by obesity is thus three times that for women. Going from what the US terms grade-one obesity, defined as a BMI of 25-29.9, to grade two, which is a BMI over 40, causes a rapid, hockey-stick-shaped increase in risk. BMI is defined as your weight in kilogrammes divided by the square of your height in metres.

While the study did not look at causes, other research has shown that obese men tend to have more heart attacks and strokes as well as diabetes and fatty liver disease than women.

The logical conclusion is that obese people need to lose weight but Dr Di Angelantonio acknowledged that this can be difficult. A meta-analysis published in the British Medical Journal in 2014 noted that while attempts to change diet and exercise behaviours were often successful, “few people manage to maintain these changes in weight over the long term”.

But if you are successful at changing diet and physical activity sufficiently to lose those extra kilos, there is a considerable health benefit, Dr Di Angelantonio said. If you are a man and you lose 10 per cent of your body weight, your risk of dying is reduced by 20 per cent, he said. If you are a woman and lose 10 per cent of your body weight, your risk is reduced by 10 per cent.

“Losing weight is a very difficult business and studies show most people tend to regain the lost weight in 12-24 months,” Dr Di Angelantonio said. “That's why we need new strategies for increasing physical activity and healthy eating.”

請根據(jù)你所讀到的文章內(nèi)容，完成以下自測題目：

1．What can be increased by marginally overweight if you are a man?

A．the risk of being unhealthy

B．the risk of dying prematurely

C．the risk of sleeping deprivation

D．the risk of malnutrition

答案

2．What is the percentage risk of dying before age 70 that man has a normal weight?

A．11 per cent risk of dying

B．18 per cent risk of dying

C．19 per cent risk of dying

D．35 per cent risk of dying

答案

3．What is the US grade-one obesity？

A．BMI of 25-29.9

B．BMI of 30-39.9

C．BMI of 45-49.9

D．BMI over 50

答案

4．What will be the risk of dying is reduced if a man loses 10 per cent of body weight?

A．reduced by 10 per cent

B．reduced by 20 per cent

C．reduced by 35 per cent

D．reduced by 40 per cent

答案