Mixed
Dropping a BMI category (e.g., from obese to overweight or overweight to normal) during adulthood, even if the weight loss is not sustained, is associated with reduced carotid intima media thickness (cIMT) and improved cardiovascular risk factors compared to maintaining a higher BMI category.
You do not need to keep the weight off forever to get heart benefits. If you lose enough weight to move down a category (e.g., from obese to overweight), your arteries and blood pressure improve, even if you gain some weight back later. This suggests that any attempt to reduce weight in adulthood is valuable for long-term cardiovascular health.
Individuals who dropped a BMI category in adulthood had lower cIMT (–0·034 mm, –0·056 to –0·013) and leptin concentrations (–0·4 ng/mL, –0·47 to –0·32), even when this change was not maintained, than did those who never lost weight.
Why this rating
High-quality longitudinal cohort data (1946 British birth cohort) with long-term follow-up and objective vascular measures (cIMT), though observational design limits causal inference.
Source
Lifelong patterns of BMI and cardiovascular phenotype in individuals aged 60–64 years in the 1946 British birth cohort study: an epidemiological study
Marietta Charakida et al. · The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology · 2014
DOI 10.1016/s2213-8587(14)70103-2
Related findings · Mixed
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