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The connection between obesity and diabetes — two areas of focus for a well-run workplace wellness program — is one that we've addressed often, including:

• This post: MedPage Today reports that “maintaining stable weight and loss of weight were each strongly associated with a decreased risk for diabetes among middle-aged adults, a new study found.” In fact, “the researchers predicted that about 20% of new diabetes cases could be prevented if adulthood weight was maintained within one body mass index (BMI) point, or within 3% of total weight.”
• This post: In a study titled Sugar-Sweetened Beverage but Not Diet Soda Consumption Is Positively Associated with Progression of Insulin Resistance and Prediabetes, the authors conclude that “regular SSB (sugar-sweetened beverages) intake, but not diet soda intake, is associated with a greater increase in insulin resistance and a higher risk of developing prediabetes in a group of middle-aged adults.”
• This post: The New York Times reports that “Carrying excess weight may have a greater impact on the risk for diabetes than it does on the risk for heart disease or early death.” The report is based on a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) titled “Risks of Myocardial Infarction, Death, and Diabetes in Identical Twin Pairs With Different Body Mass Indexes.” The study sought “to compare the risk of myocardial infarction (MI), type 2 diabetes, and death in monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs discordant for body mass index (BMI).”

Now Gallup reports that “Obese adults between the ages of 25 and 64 are at least four times more likely to have been diagnosed with diabetes than those who are normal weight… By their mid-to-late 30s, 9.3% of adults who are obese have been diagnosed with diabetes, compared with 1.8% among those who are normal weight.”

The post continues: “In 2016, 28.4% of all U.S. adults were classified as obese, and 11.6% reported having been diagnosed with diabetes. Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have estimated that about one in three Americans born in the year 2000 will be diagnosed with diabetes in their lifetime, and that the percentage of Americans with the disease will at least double from current levels by the year 2050.”

And there's added focus on women: “In 2016, women were only slightly more likely than men to report having been diagnosed with diabetes — 11.7% to 11.4%, respectively. Women who are obese, however, are more likely than obese men to have diabetes across all age groups up to age 60, at which point both groups converge. The increased diabetes risk is considerably higher for obese women than for obese men across most age groups.”