Helping the underprivileged lose weight may be as simple as providing reliable group support.
A study published earlier this month in Archives of Internal Medicine reveals that regular medical feedback and personalized monitoring helps maximize weight loss in obese patients. Researchers documented the weight fluctuations of 365 obese patients from low-income and ethnic minority backgrounds. After 24 months, the patients who received monthly intervention training and counseling treatment lost on average 2.3 pounds more than those who received traditional weight loss care. The study was funded by grants from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the National Cancer Institute.
“Though the average weight loss appears moderate, the most significant finding from this study is that the patients kept their weight down throughout the two-year period,” said lead author Gary Bennett, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke. “We tried to customize behavioral goals depending on each patient’s personal goals.”
The results of the study may indicate a more effective way in maintaining weight loss, particularly in people experiencing socioeconomic challenges. The weight loss program in the study followed an intervention obesity treatment approach.
Patients received three goals meant to modify their behavior and then either self-monitored their progress through the study’s website or recorded their progress through an interactive voice response system.
Bennett noted that the researchers used several computer algorithms in the study, which allowed them to lower the cost of the research and reach more patients.
“For example, Person A may get a goal that says they should walk 8,000 steps in a day, and Person B will get another task asking them to eat five servings of fruits,” he said.
Participants in the intervention group also participated in monthly meetings with a health coach, said Erica Warner, research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health and co-author of the study. The patients met with their coach once a month in the first year of the study and bimonthly in the second year. Patients traditionally started to gain weight again after six months, Warner noted, but the addition of health meetings allowed subjects to maintain weight loss throughout the program.
Warner said that helping low-income populations lose weight, particularly during a recession, is challenging. Despite the economic challenges preventing people from eating healthy, the patients were engaged throughout the entire program. The high follow-up rate from the participants is encouraging for future research, she added.
“More studies should be done in order to help these low-income populations, who have the highest risk for diseases like obesity and hypertension,” Warner said. “These sorts of intervention programs can be applied to health centers.”
Additional research is already underway to study methods of preventing weight gain, Bennett said. Apart from running a study in China that looks at refining the approach to obesity treatment, Bennett is also interested in examining the effects of weight fluctuations on overall health in the future.
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