A new study from McGill University has found that obesity can shorten your life by as many as eight years. Young people who are obese are at the highest risk — the sooner you become obese, the more health risks you have.
The study, published Thursday in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, found that obesity is linked to an increased risk of heart disease as well as type 2 diabetes. Both can reduce life expectancy and cause chronic illness. Extreme obesity, meanwhile, could take as many as 19 years of healthy living off your life.
To reach the study's conclusions, the researchers used data from 3,992 participants in the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to create a model that estimated participants' risk of disease, based on their weight.