Weight Maven

Via Michael Prager come these reports of a small, fairly short, yet interesting pilot study recently published in Obesity.

Researchers found:

that obese individuals participating in a low-intensity behavioral weight loss program who were supported by either a professional health coach or a peer coach lost clinically significant amounts of weight (at least 5 percent of their initial body weight)

Interesting tidbits from the reports and abstract:

• 44 participants met for 12 times over the course of 24 weeks (weekly for 6 weeks, bi-weekly for 6 weeks, then monthly)
• there were 3 study arms featuring professional, peer (another group member) or mentor (successful weight loser) coaches
• retention was 95% (!)
• professional and peer-coached participants performed similarly, outperforming the mentor-coached participants:
  ♦ percent losses at study’s end were 9.6, 9.1, and 5.7 for the professional, peer, and mentor-coached groups respectively
  ♦ half of the professional and peer coached participants lost 10% of their weight compared to 17% of the mentor-coached participants

It will be very interesting to see if the findings hold up in larger trials. In particular, I’ll be very curious to see if the difference between the groups is repeated, since that is very intriguing!