Research

Mixed

In patients with type 2 diabetes or prediabetes and established cardiovascular risk, maintaining a BMI of 25–35 kg/m² (overweight to mild obesity) is associated with lower all-cause and cardiovascular mortality compared to a normal BMI of 22–24.9 kg/m².

If you have diabetes or prediabetes along with other heart disease risks, do not aggressively pursue weight loss to reach a 'normal' BMI (22-25). Your data suggests you are safest in the overweight to mild obesity range (BMI 25-35). Focus on cardiovascular health markers rather than the scale number.

GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
The lowest mortality risk was seen in patients with overweight and moderate obesity (BMI 25–35 kg/m2).
Wolfram Doehner et al. · European Heart Journal · 2020

Why this rating

Large randomized trial (ORIGIN, N=12,521) with long follow-up (6.2 years) and multivariable adjustment, though observational in nature regarding BMI categories.

Source

Obesity and weight loss are inversely related to mortality and cardiovascular outcome in prediabetes and type 2 diabetes: data from the ORIGIN trial

Wolfram Doehner et al. · European Heart Journal · 2020

DOI 10.1093/eurheartj/ehaa293

rct · n=12521Cited 97×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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