Older women who regain weight after losing a few pounds, which is common after fast weight loss, often see it return mostly as fat rather than muscle, a new study shows.
The study of 78 sedentary women, who were aged an average 58 and who had lost 25 pounds, found that a third of the weight they lost was muscle, and that 80 percent of the weight that returned was fat.
The high proportion of fat in regained weight may be a normal effect of aging, says one of the study’s researchers, Dr. Barbara Nicklas of the J. Paul Sticht Center on Aging and Rehabilitation at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C. Past studies have found that younger people regain weight in the same proportion between fat and muscle that they lost it, said Nicklas.
The results suggest that older women should avoid becoming overweight in the first place, and should work hard to keep it off once they lose it, said Tufts University’s Dr. Alice Lichtenstein, who was not involved in the study.
"For those women who have gained excess body weight and are then successful in losing it, this finding may add a bit more impetus to maintain the weight loss," Lichtenstein told HealthDay News.