Dambed if you do, and if you don't

There aren't enough details really for it to help us to know whether it applies to [which] individual cases or not. But here am I gently losing weight because of a genetic predisposition to high cholesterol and now wondering whether I should be.

"It seems as if the long-term effect of the weight loss is a general weakening of the body that leads to an increased risk of dying from several different causes," said Dr Sorensen. "The adverse effects of losing lean body mass may overrule the beneficial effects of losing fat mass when dieting,"

So now they have to work out if the hypothesis about why "Healthy overweight or obese subjects who try to lose weight and succeed in doing so over a six-year period suffer from almost double the risk of dying during the next 18" is correct, and then work out from that whether there are ways to lose weight that don't incur that risk.



In the meantime the best that can be offered appears to be "If people are overweight, their main priority should be to stop gaining weight and then work on losing some rather than chasing a low body mass index," said Tom Sanders, professor of nutrition and dietetics at King's College London. "If you can stop people gaining weight in their 20s and 30s, it seems to have the best outcome in the long term."

The former, somewhat comfortingly, seems to be my situation. The latter is what I'm trying to convey to my kids.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Overweight who diet risk dying earlier, says study