Research
Adherence
Higher lifestyle disruption during the pandemic is associated with greater bidirectional weight variability, including both significant weight loss and weight gain, particularly in younger, female, and socio-economically deprived individuals.
Pandemic disruption affected everyone's weight variability, but the outcome depended on your starting point. If you had unhealthy habits, you likely improved. If you were already healthy, you likely stayed the same. Targeted support is needed for vulnerable groups who may experience negative outcomes.
ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
Disruption of health behaviour was higher in younger, female and socio-economically deprived participants. Loss in body weight was greater in highly disrupted individuals than in those with low disruption.
Why this rating
Large sample size, but observational and self-reported.
Source
Diet and lifestyle behaviour disruption related to the pandemic was varied and bidirectional among US and UK adults participating in the ZOE COVID Study
Mohsen Mazidi et al. · Nature Food · 2021
DOI 10.1038/s43016-021-00398-3
cohort · n=896286Cited 26×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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