Phone and email counseling to help people improve their diet and lose weight, according to a Dutch study published on Friday, pointing to a simple but effective instrument in the fight against obesity.
The study of 1400 workers overweight Dutch suggests this type of lifestyle advice is especially good for those willing to seek face to face counseling to deal with weight problems.
“We found significant weight loss with telephone counseling has not been seen in other research,” said Marieke Van Wier, a researcher at the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, who worked on the study.
“If you get some people to lose a small amount of weight that can make great impact on public health.”
Obesity, which increases the risk of diseases such as type 2 diabetes and heart problems, is a growing problem as more people adopt a sedentary lifestyle.
The World Health Organization classifies around 400 million people worldwide as obese.
Van Wier and colleagues randomly assigned to the volunteers – all of which were classified as overweight – either in a control group who had no advice, he received a telephone counseling and other mail counseling.
The advice includes the encouragement to stay in shape, such as taking a walk at lunch, and stressed eating a healthy diet. That did not lead to weight loss goal, Van Wier said in a telephone interview.
After six months on the phone counseling lost 3.3 pounds more than those in the control group, while the volunteers via email about a loss of more pounds, said Van Wier.
The researchers, who published their findings in the journal BioMed Central, that such advice could strengthen more aggressive goals of weight loss for people with overweight, Van Wier said.
“If you talk to someone, people feel a little more pressure to make the change,” said Van Wier. “It is modest weight loss, but the key is not pressure people to make big changes.
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