Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 17, 1995 TAG: 9510170084
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associa$xted Press|
DATELINE: BATON ROUGE, LA. LENGTH: Medium
The researchers also found that women who were told to exercise in 10-minute bouts four times a day exercised more and lost more weight than women told to exercise for 40 minutes once a day.
Rena Wing, a psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh and one of the studies' authors, described the findings Monday at the annual meeting of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity.
The women given detailed meal instructions and shopping lists at their weekly weight-loss meetings lost about 26 pounds in 26 weeks, compared with a weight loss of 171/2 pounds in women who went to similar meetings but were not given the same detailed eating instructions, Wing said.
A year after the study ended, both groups had regained weight, but the women who had received the meal plans were still about 15 pounds below where they had started, compared with about 7 pounds in the others.
``It's a dramatic difference in weight control,'' Wing said. ``It also led to more regular eating'' after the study ended. Women had more fruits and vegetables in their homes, and they were more likely to eat breakfast and lunch regularly and avoid snacks, Wing said.
The findings suggest that structured weight-loss regimens are generally likely to be more effective than flexible plans, she said.
The researchers also experimented with actually providing boxes of food to the women each week, but that produced no additional benefits, Wing said.
Patrick O'Neil, a psychologist and director of the weight management center at the Medical University of South Carolina, said the study ``certainly does show pretty convincingly that the more structure that can be provided to the weight manager - I don't like the word `dieter' - the better.''
All of the women in Wing's studies participated in a 26-week series of weekly meetings aimed at changing their dieting and exercise behavior. They were told to eat 1,000 to 1,500 calories per day and exercise more.
They also were educated about nutrition and given tricks to help with such problems as staying on diets during holidays and coping with nondieting spouses. A total of 163 women participated in the study of meal plans.
In a separate study of 56 women also on the standard weekly program, Wing's University of Pittsburgh colleague, John Jakicic, told half of the subjects to increase their exercise until they were doing four 10-minute bouts per day. The other half were instructed gradually to increase exercise in a single bout until it reached 40 minutes per day. Most of the women chose walking for their exercise.
The women who exercised in short bouts exercised more overall and lost about 20 pounds after 26 weeks. The women who were told to exercise in longer stretches lost about 13 pounds.
``There is no question that exercise is probably the single best predictor of long-term weight loss,'' Wing said.
Wing is now involved in a study of the most successful dieters - women who have lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off for a year. ``We want to find out who they are and how they do it,'' she said.
by CNB