Behavioral Weight Loss and Maintenance: A 25-Year Research Program Informing Innovative Programming.

Abstract

Introduction Behavioral interventions targeting sustained weight loss have largely failed for decades, with little chance of improvement using prevailing methods. Objective To address treatment limitations, a focused 25-year research program was reviewed through the lens of social cognitive theory, probative investigations, and original predictive models. Innovative, but evidence-based, treatment suggestions were sought. Results Task 1 of the research program addressed adherence to exercise, a well-established requirement for maintained weight loss. A culminating model addressing this treatment aspect suggested that interrelations among changes in self-regulatory skills usage, self-efficacy, and mood should guide exercise-support programming. Task 2 attached an eating-behavior change component and probed for malleable psychosocial variables predictive of success over the weight-loss phase (initial 6 months after treatment initiation). After thorough evaluation of selected theory- and research-driven psychosocial variables, changes in self-regulation, self-efficacy, and mood were again deemed to be the most salient predictors driving eating change. In Task 3, treatment foci related to changes in the 3 psychosocial variables were supported into the weight-loss maintenance phase (beyond 6 months), and the carry-over of changes in self-regulation and self-efficacy from exercise- to eating-related contexts was identified and leveraged. Task 4 suggested value in additionally addressing emotional eating as a distinct factor. Conclusion Suggestions informing principles and extensions of a treatment approach previously demonstrating atypically high degrees of success with maintaining weight loss in field- and community-based settings are provided. Those methods emanate from the reviewed research program, which shaped novel procedures to leverage exercise-induced psychosocial changes for their carry-over benefits for controlling eating.