Research

Energy balance

In older adults (55-70 years), long-term lifestyle interventions for weight loss in prediabetes result in greater sustained weight loss but inferior preservation of fat-free mass and bone mineral content compared to younger adults (25-45 years).

If you are over 55 and losing weight, expect to lose more muscle and bone than a younger person would for the same amount of weight lost. To counter this, you must prioritize resistance training and adequate protein intake, as standard lifestyle interventions alone may not preserve lean mass effectively in this age group.

GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
older adults had greater sustained weight loss after the WM intervention... After the WM intervention, older adults lost more fat-free mass and bone mass... than younger adults.
Ruixin Zhu et al. · Diabetologia · 2022

Why this rating

Large-scale RCT (n=2223) with long-term follow-up (3 years), though this specific analysis is observational/post-hoc.

Source

Age- and sex-specific effects of a long-term lifestyle intervention on body weight and cardiometabolic health markers in adults with prediabetes: results from the diabetes prevention study PREVIEW

Ruixin Zhu et al. · Diabetologia · 2022

DOI 10.1007/s00125-022-05716-3

rct · n=2223Cited 33×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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