The New York Times “Well” blog reports that according to a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine, “overweight adolescents who slim down in middle age may lower their risk” of heart disease. Researchers used “the Harvard Alumni Health Study,” and followed up with 19,000 people “for up to 82 years.” The findings include that “the heaviest students were more likely to become overweight or obese adults” and “had nearly twice the risk of dying of heart disease decades later as the men who had been of normal weight in college.”
However, and this is critical, those “who started college overweight or obese but were of normal weight in middle age no longer had a higher risk of dying of heart disease.”
So, normalizing your weight can be a highly healthy habit, no matter how old you may be.