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Monthly Personal Counseling Helps Maintain Weight Loss |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: In the largest and longest study to date of weight loss maintenance strategies, researchers at Duke University Medical Center found that personal contact -- and, to a lesser extent, a computer-based support system -- were helpful in keeping weight off. "The results of this study send a strong signal to those who seem to believe that obesity is such an intractable problem that nothing can be done about it," says Dr. Laura Svetkey, professor of medicine at Duke and the lead author of the study. Svetkey and researchers at four institutions around the country studied 1685 overweight or obese adults who were being treated for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or both. Only participants who lost at least nine pounds were admitted to a second phase of the study; 61 percent met that goal, with weight loss ranging from nine to 66 pounds. In the second phase, 1032 participants were randomized to one of three groups: a self-directed control group, where they were left to their own devices to manage their weight; a personal contact group, where they received monthly coaching and support from a counselor assigned to them; or a computer-based, weight loss maintenance program that offered the same counseling that personal contact offered, but in a virtual, interactive format. The computer intervention group had a 69 percent success rate and the self-directed group had 67 percent. After that point, the virtual intervention lost its edge, and by the end of the study, their efforts at maintaining weight loss were similar to those enrolled in the self-directed control group.
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