A comparison of specific strategies for long term maintenance following a behavioural treatment program for obese women

Abstract

Over a 10‐week period, 102 women who had been randomly assigned to conditions received 7 sessions of a standard behavioral treatment, followed by 3 sessions of training in one of the following 5 maintenance strategies: continued self‐monitoring, urge control, relapse prevention, a combination of the previous three strategies, or attention‐placebo. There were 85 women available for a 1 year follow‐up. Results showed that the different maintenance conditions did not differentially affect weight loss beyond that produced by the attention‐placebo. Participants lost an average of 5.08 kg during the 10‐week program. They began to regain weight by the 4‐month follow‐up and continued to do so at the 1‐year follow‐up. However, mean weight at the 1‐year follow‐up was still significantly below pretreatment weight (mean Joss of 2.18 kg). In total, 21.8% of the sample either maintained postprogram weight or continued to lose weight, whereas 29% either returned to pretreatment weight or regained above pretreatment weight by the 1‐year follow‐up. Consideration of results clearly suggests that adherence is a major problem with maintenance techniques.