COVID-19: Your Motivation to Finally Lose the Weight

By Editorial Staff

Since the coronavirus pandemic took hold sometime around the beginning of the year, researchers have been conducting just about every study under the sun to determine how it affects us, how to treat it – and perhaps of highest importance, who's the most vulnerable (and thus in the most need of protection, in the form of either protective protocols or first priority for a vaccine / treatment). That brings us to weight and specifically obesity, the American epidemic affecting an estimated 42 percent of the U.S. adult population.

We've heard throughout the year that obesity is a risk factor for COVID-19 complications, but now research makes that risk frighteningly clear. According to a large meta-analysis just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, if you're obese and you test positive for COVID-19, you face these sobering statistics: a 113 percent higher risk of being hospitalized and a 48 percent higher risk of dying compared with overweight or normal-weight individuals who contract the virus.

We prefer to consider the glass half full, not half empty, in this scenario and ask anyone who's current obese to ponder the opportunity: If you lose weight, transitioning from obese to overweight or normal weight, you won't just be shedding the weight, but also the significantly higher COVID-19 risks noted in the study.

If losing weight has always been a challenge, perhaps the pandemic can serve as the motivation you need. In a frustrating, unprecedented year, why not remember 2020 as your best year ever – the year you lost the weight you've always wanted to lose? Talk to your doctor for advice and an action plan today.