Published in:
01-10-2016 | Original Contributions
Stability of Metabolic Factor Before and After Bariatric Surgery
Published in: Obesity Surgery | Issue 10/2016
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Background
A new metric called metabolic factor (resting metabolic rate/weight) has previously been established that can differentiate between people who are obese, overweight, and of normal weight. Previous studies were re-analyzed and found that people who lost weight did not experience a change in their metabolic factor.
Materials and Methods
The current study measured the metabolic factor of 18 individuals before and after bariatric surgery.
Results
As expected, individuals lost nearly 100 lb and therefore lowered their resting metabolic rate from 2614.3 to 1954.4 kcal (p < 0.05). However, the pre-operative metabolic factor of 8.1 (1.1) cal/lb did not change significantly as it slightly increased to 8.6 (0.88) after surgery (p = 0.19). Weight loss was not statistically significantly correlated with change in metabolic factor (r = 0.22). The follow-up metabolic factor negatively correlated with post-operative BMI, r = −0.48 (p < 0.05), indicating the higher the metabolic factor, the lower the post-operative BMI.
Conclusions
This study seems to establish the possibility that metabolic factor is not simply a function of one’s current weight, but instead might be a stable characteristic unique to each individual.