Table 1.
Characteristics of women included in the analyses, by degree of weight change between the earliest available weight and weight at or close to recruitment to the study
| Factor1 | Weight change category2 | Overall | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Loss ≥5 kg | Stable (±4.9 kg) | Gain 5–9.9 kg | Gain 10–14.9 kg | Gain 15–19.9 kg | Gain ≥20 kg | |||
| Height (cm) | Mean | 165.0 | 164.4 | 164.9 | 165.0 | 165.2 | 165.6 | 164.8 |
| Age at first weight3 | Mean | 19.9 | 22.1 | 20.1 | 19.5 | 19.3 | 19.1 | 20.6 |
| First weight (kg) | Mean | 71.4 | 57.5 | 56.4 | 56.7 | 57.8 | 60.5 | 58.2 |
| First BMI (kg/m2) | Mean | 26.2 | 21.3 | 20.7 | 20.8 | 21.2 | 22.0 | 21.4 |
| Age at recruitment (years) | Mean | 37.9 | 37.6 | 38.8 | 39.8 | 40.2 | 40.4 | 39.3 |
| Recruitment weight (kg) | Mean | 60.6 | 58.5 | 63.6 | 68.8 | 74.8 | 89.2 | 65.7 |
| Recruitment BMI (kg/m2) | Mean | 22.2 | 21.7 | 23.4 | 25.3 | 27.4 | 32.5 | 24.2 |
| Change in weight between starting age and recruitment (kg) | Mean | −10.8 | 1.0 | 7.2 | 12.1 | 17.0 | 28.7 | 7.5 |
| Median | −8.7 | 1.4 | 7.0 | 12.0 | 17.0 | 26.0 | 5.9 | |
| Rate of weight change between starting age and recruitment (kg/year) | Mean | −0.8 | 0.1 | 0.5 | 0.7 | 0.9 | 1.5 | 0.4 |
| Median | −0.5 | 0.1 | 0.4 | 0.6 | 0.8 | 1.3 | 0.3 | |
| Ethnicity | ||||||||
| White | % | 90.0 | 90.4 | 87.7 | 84.4 | 79.6 | 70.5 | 85.7 |
| Black | % | 6.0 | 5.3 | 8.6 | 12.3 | 17.5 | 27.3 | 10.6 |
| Asian | % | 1.9 | 2.8 | 2.1 | 1.8 | 1.2 | 0.5 | 2.0 |
| Other | % | 2.1 | 1.6 | 1.6 | 1.6 | 1.7 | 1.7 | 1.6 |
| Continent of residence | ||||||||
| North America | % | 63.2 | 57.4 | 53.2 | 51.6 | 55.0 | 65.6 | 56.6 |
| Europe | % | 35.3 | 40.8 | 44.9 | 46.1 | 42.6 | 32.1 | 41.4 |
| Australia | % | 0.8 | 0.7 | 1.3 | 1.8 | 2.2 | 2.2 | 1.3 |
| Asia | % | 0.7 | 1.1 | 0.7 | 0.5 | 0.3 | 0.09 | 0.7 |
| All participants | Total | 32,726 | 253,164 | 140,227 | 86,632 | 48,297 | 67,417 | 628,463 |
1
Frequency distributions for nonmissing values only.
2
Weight change was computed between earliest available weight and first weight available at or after recruitment, with the exception of a small number of subjects for whom weight change was computed from two retrospectively assessed weights before recruitment because weight at or after recruitment was not available.
3
Weight was retrospectively assessed at age 18 or 20 for the majority of studies.