Is the Most Effective Weight-Loss Strategy Really That Hard? | Newswise: News for Journalists:
Dietary self-monitoring is the best predictor of weight-loss success. But the practice is viewed as so onerous, many would-be weight-losers won’t adopt it. New research published in Obesity shows for the first time how little time it actually takes: 14.6 minutes per day. Frequency of monitoring was the key success factor.
-
Credit: Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist
Dietary
self-monitoring is less onerous than is generally perceived. The most
successful participants in a recent weight loss study spent at average
of just 14.6 per day on the practice. Monitoring frequently was the key
success factor, not the time spent on the activity.
MEDIA CONTACT
Available for logged-in reporters only
CITATIONS
Obesity
SECTION
TYPE OF ARTICLE
Research Results
KEYWORDS
Weight Loss,
Dietary Self-Monitoring,
Obesity,
Obesity Epidemic,
weight loss strategy ,
Weight and Metabolism Management Program,
Losing Weight,
Calories,
Fat,
Calories from Fat,
Exercise
Newswise — If you want lose weight, research shows,
the single best predictor of success is monitoring and recording calorie
and fat intake throughout the day – to “write it when you bite it.”
But
dietary self-monitoring is widely viewed as so unpleasant and
time-consuming, many would-be weight-losers can’t muster the will power
to do it.
New research to be published in the March issue of
Obesity suggests that the reality of dietary self-monitoring may be far less disagreeable than the perception.
After
six months of monitoring their dietary intake, the most successful
participants in an online behavioral weight-loss program spent an
average of just 14.6 minutes per day on the activity. Program
participants recorded the calories and fat for all foods and beverages
they consumed, as well as the portion sizes and the preparation methods.
The
study, conducted by researchers at the University of Vermont and the
University of South Carolina, is the first to quantify the amount of
time that dietary self-monitoring actually takes for those who
successfully lose weight.
“People hate it; they think it's onerous
and awful, but the question we had was: How much time does dietary
self-monitoring really take?" said Jean Harvey, chair of the Nutrition
and Food Sciences Department at the University of Vermont and the lead
author of the study. "The answer is, not very much."
Harvey and
her colleagues looked at the dietary self-monitoring habits of 142
participants in an online behavioral weight control intervention. For 24
weeks, participants met weekly for an online group session led by a
trained dietician.
They also logged their daily food intake
online, in the process leaving behind a record of how much time they
spent on the activity and how often they logged in – information the
researchers mined for the new study.
Participants who lost 10
percent of their body weight – the most successful members of the cohort
– spent an average of 23.2 minutes per day on self-monitoring in the
first month of the program. By the sixth month, the time had dropped to
14.6 minutes.
Brief but frequent
What was most
predictive of weight-loss success was not the time spent monitoring –
those who took more time and included more detail did not have better
outcomes – but the frequency of log-ins, confirming the conclusions of
earlier studies.
“Those who self-monitored three or more time per
day, and were consistent day after day, were the most successful,”
Harvey said. “It seems to be the act of self-monitoring itself that
makes the difference – not the time spent or the details included.”
Harvey
attributes the decrease in time needed for self-monitoring to
participants’ increasing efficiency in recording data and to the web
program’s progressive ability to complete words and phrases
automatically after just a few letters were entered.
The study's most important contribution, Harvey said, may be in helping prospective weight-losers set behavioral targets.
“We
know people do better when they have the right expectations,” Harvey
said. “We've been able to tell them that they should exercise 200
minutes per week. But when we asked them to write down all their foods,
we could never say how long it would take. Now we can.”
With
online dietary monitoring apps like LoseIt, Calorie King and My Fitness
Pal widely available, Harvey hopes the study results motivate more
people to adopt dietary self-monitoring as a weight-loss strategy.
“It’s highly effective, and it’s not as hard as people think,” she said.
The stakes are high. The
latest federal data show
that nearly 40 percent of American adults were obese in 2015–16, up
from 34 percent in 2007–08. Obesity is linked to chronic diseases
including type 2 diabetes, hyperlipidemia, high blood pressure,
cardiovascular disease and cancer and
accounts for 18 percent of deaths among Americans ages 40 to 85, according to a 2013 study.
