Many of us would like to lose weight, to feel better and improve our overall health.
The 2019 Health Survey for England estimated that 28% of adults in England were obese and a further 36% were overweight, costing the NHS and wider economy billions of pounds a year. But sticking to a strict diet can not only be difficult, but is likely to end in a short-term (if any) weight loss, as well as messing up your metabolism.
Dieters would be right to be wary about who to trust, which is why researchers set out to review the most effective programmes as led by GPs, according to the Daily Record.
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Indeed, your doctor can help you lose weight and keep it off, according to a review just published in the medical journal The BMJ. Their research examined the different GP-led weight loss programmes and what made them successful.
Read on for the findings, as explained by two of the study's co-authors - Claire Madigan, a senior research associate of Loughborough University, and Liz Sturgiss, a senior research Fellow of Monash University.
For people looking to lose weight, it can be hard to know where to start. Not only are there scores of commercial weight loss programmes to choose from, there’s also plenty of confusing and contradictory weight loss advice to be found online or in magazines.
But the best person to help you lose weight may actually be your family doctor, as the recent review showed. It also found that weight loss programmes delivered by general practitioners (GPs) and their teams can help people lose weight and reduce their waist size.
People, the review said, could also maintain their weight loss after two years.
Researchers looked at 27 studies with data from 8,000 people. There was a lot of variation in the weight loss programmes offered by GPs.
Some studies involved participants who only had one short advice session with a doctor, while others involved multiple visits with their GP. The length of the programmes also varied – from three months to three years.
Most sessions were conducted in person, while some were done over the phone or online. In some studies, nurses, dieticians and health coaches also gave weight loss advice to participants.
The advice GPs gave to participants usually included education about increasing physical activity and reducing calorie intake through self-monitoring. Sometimes weigh-ins and feedback was also included to motivate patients. Some studies also had GPs give patients specific diets or structured workout plans.
After a year, people who received help from their doctor lost an average of 3.7kg – 2.3kg more than people who did not receive help from their GP. While this difference in weight loss may seem small, even losing 2%-5% of body weight can have a range of health benefits, such as improved blood sugar levels.
Studies also showed that people who lost weight with help from their GP kept around 80% of it off when followed up two years later.
The study also found the two programmes that had the greatest weight loss in a 12-month period were those that used a total diet replacement plan. Total diet replacements involve replacing foods with a number of formula products such as shakes and provide between 800-1200 calories per day.
These are mostly used in people with high sugar levels to try and reverse type 2 diabetes. However anyone with obesity may use them to lose weight quickly.
The third best programme involved weekly sessions for the first six months, followed by monthly sessions for 18 months thereafter. For the first month, participants were given prepackaged foods and meal replacement shakes.
Replacement of foods may be easier to stick to at first as participants don’t need to decide what foods to make.
Researchers also said having a weight loss plan can help people lose weight better than those who follow self-guided programmes. It said commercial weight loss programmes (such as Weight Watchers or Slimming World) can help participants lose between 0.8kg and 2.7kg on average in a year compared to those who didn’t attend such a programme.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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