Guess What? A Single In Office Visit Encouraging People To Weight Themselves More Often And Exercise Doesn't Prevent Weight Regain

From the Journal of Duh! (ok, actually it was PLOS Medicine) comes Behavioural intervention for weight loss maintenance versus standard weight advice in adults with obesity: A randomised controlled trial in the UK (NULevel Trial). The study involved 288 people who had lost ≥ 5% of their weight in the preceding 12 months who were randomized into two groups. One where they received periodic newsletters, and the other where they had a single face-to-face visit where they discussed goal setting and self-monitoring (including being told to weigh themselves daily) followed by every other day automated text messages. The hope was that the single visit and text messages would help prevent weight regain in the group that received them. So did that minimal intervention help?

No, both groups regained the same amount of weight over the study's duration.

What was most surprising about this study wasn't that minimal interventions don't help prevent weight regain, but rather that someone thought they might. Because if minimal interventions prevented weight regain, do you really think weight regain would be so commonplace?

So in case you were looking for proof that single office visits and text messages aren't in and of themselves sufficient to prevent weight regain, there you have it I suppose.