Study: losing weight not always most healthy option

Losing a few pounds may not be good for you if you’re already within a healthy weight range.

Being underweight can be more detrimental to your health than obesity, a new study conducted at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, has found.

The new research compared mortality rates of underweight individuals to those who are normal weight and found that the underweight group faced nearly twice the risk of death as those of normal weight. Underweight is defined as having a BMI under 18.5, about 60 kilograms at 1.8 metres or 55 kilograms at 1.7 metres.

Relative to obese and severely obese populations, defined as a having a BMI above 30, who die at about 1.2 times the rate of normal weight individuals, underweight individuals have a higher risk of death at 1.8 times the rate of those at normal weight.

Dr. Joel Ray, the researcher-physician who headed the study, suggests that the best approach to living a healthy lifestyle is to try and keep your weight in a healthy range, and that doesn’t always mean losing weight.

“Our focus as a society has been on overweight, obese and very obese, and there’s no problem in our focus,” Ray told the National Post. “It’s an important public health and individual health issue, but in the process we’ve neglected the influence of being underweight on mortality.”

The researchers also found that underweight individuals more often were malnourished, abused drugs and alcohol, smoked and had poor mental health.