Daily intensive lifestyle intervention at home, during which patients receive help changing nutritional, eating and exercising habits, is an effective method for achieving weight loss, according to a study by doctoral student Espen Gjevestad at Norway’s Vestfold Hospital’s Morbid Obesity Center.
During his study, Gjevestad compared the effectiveness of intensive, in-home programs with moderate lifestyle intervention at a secondary care obesity center.
“Lifestyle changes should be made where lives are spent. There’s no place like home,” says Gjevestad. The findings give a good indication of how treatment should be organized in the future, he adds.
Between 2 and 3 percent of the Norwegian population is morbidly obese, and those numbers are increasing, according to a ScienceNordic article.
For the study, Gjevestad and his colleagues divided 372 patients into two groups. One received moderate lifestyle intervention for 10 consecutive weeks at a local clinic, with follow-ups three times during the next six months. Initially the second group received intensive lifestyle intervention three times a week for three months. Afterwards they were given monthly consultations for the next nine months, the article notes.
The average weight loss in the group that received the moderate treatment was 3 kilos in the course of a year. The ones who were given intensive treatment shed an average of 13.3 kilos each. The members of the at-home group also felt better.
“This shows that it’s vital to offer an intensive treatment regime for morbidly obese patients,” adds Gjevestad.
Source: ScienceNordic
