Combining personalized counseling with Weight Watchers maximizes weight loss.(Brief Article)

2002 OCT 3 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- by Maria G. Essig, MS, ELS, senior medical writer - Adding personalized counseling to the Weight Watchers program was an effective method of promoting weight loss in obese women with breast cancer, according to a report in Obesity Research.

"The objective was to develop effective weight-loss methods for women who have had breast cancer, because obesity may result in an adverse prognosis," said Zora Djuric and colleagues at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit and The WW Group, Inc., in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

The investigators randomly assigned 48 obese women (body mass index range=30-44 kg/m[superscript]2) who had been diagnosed with breast cancer into a personalized weight loss program, the commercial Weight Watchers program, the personalized program plus Weight Watchers, or a nonintervention (control) group for 12 months.

Women in the combined Weight Watchers plus personalized counseling group lost the most amount of weight, 9.4 [plus-or-minus sign] 8.6 kg, compared with a loss of 8.0 [plus-or-minus sign] 5.5 kg for those who received individualized counseling, and 2.6[plus-or-minus sign] 5.9 kg in Weight Watchers (Combining weight-loss counseling with the Weight Watchers plan for obese breast cancer survivors. Obesity Research, 2002;10(7):657-665).

Over the same period, women in the control group gained an average of 0.85 [plus-or-minus sign] 6.0 kg. In the combined group, the amount of weight loss was statistically significant versus control at 3, 6, and 12 months. However, statistical significance in weight loss of the ...