36% Increase in Weight Loss With New Behavioral Therapy

27 Sep 2016 --- A new approach to weight loss called Acceptance-Based Behavioral Treatment (ABT) is helping people to lose more weight and keep it off longer than those who received Standard Behavioral Treatment (SBT), the typical treatment plan focusing on reduced caloric intake and increased physical activity.

The ABT method ties the effort to a larger personal value beyond weight loss for its own sake, to help people adhere to diet and physical activity goals.

The study, published in The Obesity Society’s paper, Obesity, is part of the Mind Your Health trial, and is one of the first of its kind.

Results showed that participants who received ABT, which also includes all behavioral skills taught in SBT, lost 13.3 percent of their initial weight at one year, compared to 9.8 percent weight loss at one year for participants who received SBT only.

This difference represents a clinically significant 36 percent increase in weight lost for those in the ABT group.

In addition, the likelihood of maintaining a 10 percent weight loss at 12 months was one-third greater for ABT with a rate of 64 percent versus 49 percent for ABT alone.

Researchers Thomas Wadden, PhD, FTOS, and Robert Berkowitz, MD, FTOS pointed out in the study’s accompanying commentary, that weight loss with ABT is among the largest ever reported in the behavioral treatment literature without the use of an aggressive diet or medication.

“We’re excited to share this new proven therapy with the weight-loss community, and in fact this is one of the first rigorous, randomized clinical trials to show that an alternative treatment results in greater weight loss than the gold standard, traditional form of behavioral treatment.”

The study looked at 190 participants with overweight or obesity and randomly assigned them to SBT alone, or ABT (which fused both behavioral skills from SBT with acceptance-based skills).

Participants attended 25 treatment groups over a one-year period, which consisted of brief individual check-ins, skill presentations and a skill-building exercise. All interventionists were doctoral-level clinicians with experience delivering behavioral weight loss treatments.

“These findings are a boon to clinicians, dietitians and  as they add a new dimension to behavioral therapy that can potentially help improve long-term outcomes for people with obesity,” said Steven Heymsfield, MD, FTOS, a spokesperson for The Obesity Society.

“This study is one of the first of its kind, and offers promise of a new tool to add to the toolbox of treatments for overweight and obesity,” said Heymsfield.