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Methodological issues in weight cycling

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Annals of Behavioral Medicine

Abstract

Recent studies have suggested that weight changes may be related to disease risk independent of weight status. A critical step in testing this assertion is the measurement of weight change and so-called “weight cycling”. However intuitive the concept of weight cycling may appear, research in this area is hampered by complex methodological issues. This article discusses various measures of nominal weight cycling, including the standard deviation, coefficient of variation, regression techniques, and cycles. A cycle is a sequence of a gain followed by a loss or vice versa. The various measures are compared in seven hypothetical cases created to illustrate their strengths and weaknesses. Superior performance of the cycles measure over the coefficient of variation, number of fluctuations, and simple regression methods is argued. The linkage of the cycles measure with the statistical theory of runs also provides a basis for testing the significance of weight fluctuations or other variables that may cycle, such as blood lipids, etc. The cycles measure and runs test provide a viable definition for identifying weight cycling and a tool for evaluating the critical amount of weight gained and/or lost in relationship to risk.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Biostatistics, AMC Cancer Research Center, 1600 Pierce Street, 80114, Denver, CO, USA

    Gary Cutter & Pam Wolfe

  2. University of Nevada School of Medicine, Nevada, USA

    Sachiko Jeor & Robert Brunner

  3. Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, USA

    John Foreyt

  4. Northwestern University Medical School, Evanston, USA

    Alan Dyer

  5. Yale University, New Haven, USA

    Kelly D. Brownell

Authors
  1. Gary Cutter
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  2. Sachiko Jeor
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  3. Robert Brunner
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  4. Pam Wolfe
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  5. John Foreyt
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  6. Alan Dyer
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  7. Kelly D. Brownell
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Additional information

Preparation of this manuscript was supported in part by NIH/NHLBI Grant #HL34589.

The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their efforts. Their comments contributed substantially to the revision of this paper.

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Cutter, G., Jeor, S., Brunner, R. et al. Methodological issues in weight cycling. Ann Behav Med 18, 280–289 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02895290

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