Contact: Kerri Boutelle, PhD
(612) 813-6850
kerri.boutelle@childrenshc.org

Dieters Need Intensive Support During Holidays

With daily support from weight counselors, dieters can resist holiday temptations, new research shows.

Scientists at the Illinois Institute of Technology and the Center for Behavioral Medicine, both Chicago-based, describe the tremendous difficulties dieters face during end-of-the-year festivities. Their research shows that counselors can help clients come through this risky period by contacting them daily.

"Consistency of self-monitoring should become a routine focus in weight control treatment," says Kerri Boutelle, PhD, head of the study. "Methods of improving consistency of self-monitoring include increasing therapist contact through additional sessions, telephone calls, voicemail exchanges, faxes, and e-mails."

Boutelle and colleagues specifically examined the effectiveness of having counselors call frequently to remind dieters to keep up their practice of recording everything they eat. They report their findings in the current issue of Health Psychology.

The researchers randomly assigned 57 obese men and women to one of two groups. Participants already belonged to long-term, cognitive-behavioral, treatment programs that included self-monitoring (i.e., record keeping) as a component. One group continued its regular program throughout the eight-week study. Members of the other group received supplementary phone calls and, during the two weeks that included Christmas and New Year's, daily mailings.

The extra contacts urged recipients to continue to record the type and amount of food they consumed.

The participants were veteran dieters who weighed an average of 223.2 pounds. Each had lost an average of 33.2 pounds by the time the study began. During the study, members of both groups continued to slim down in the three weeks before the holidays (an average loss of 0.3 pounds/week) and during the three weeks after (an average loss of 0.1 pound/week).

However, when the temptation-laced holidays arrived, the control group gained a weekly average of 0.6 pounds. The intervention group members also stopped losing weight, but they were able to avoid adding any. By the study's end, the intervention group had lost an average of two pounds.

The key to the intervention group's holiday success was its greater consistency in maintaining written records.

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Health Psychology is the official, peer-reviewed research journal of the Division of Health Psychology (Division 38), American Psychological Association. For information about the journal, please contact its editor, David Krantz, PhD, at 301-295-3273.