Slow-down in the rising weight of most English adults

03 Sep 2013 The trend of increasing body mass index (BMI) may be slowing down in most English adults, according to research published by researchers from The University of Manchester online in the International Journal of Obesity this week. Around two thirds of women and three quarters of men may be relatively resistant to further rises in BMI, the study suggests. Professor Andrew Renehan, from Manchester Cancer Research Centre, a partnership between The University, The Christie NHS Foundation Trust and Cancer Research UK, and colleagues from The University of Manchester's Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences and Faculty of Humanities, used a mixture modelling method to analyse BMI data collected from the Health Surveys for England between 1992 and 2010. Mixture modelling can find clusters of people in a diverse population. This work found two main clusters: 164,166 adults were categorised as either 'normal BMI' or 'high BMI', and possible influencing factors such as smoking, education and income were taken into account. Both men and women from the high-BMI group showed rising weight in early and middle adulthood, with falls in later life. However, in the normal-BMI group, the mean BMI of females steadily increased throughout early and middle adulthood, while the mean BMI of males increased the most in early adulthood.