- Researchers investigated the effects of a new weight loss intervention that helps regulate response to food cues.
- The intervention resulted in similar weight loss to an existing treatment along with less post-treatment weight gain.
- The researchers say the new intervention could be used as an alternative weight loss treatment.
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While these interventions produce moderate weight loss results, people often
Data behind the Behavioral Susceptibility Theory (BST) suggest that responses to food and satiety are highly heritable and shaped by environmental and individual-level factors, including Pavlovian and operant learning, memory, and neural changes associated with diet.
A new intervention based on improving the management of food and satiety responses may help people lose weight.
In a recent study, researchers conducted a randomized clinical trial for a newly developed weight loss intervention called “Regulation of Cues” (ROC) that targets response to food and satiety.
They found that ROC-based interventions can help those with high food responsiveness to maintain weight loss.
“ROC trains internal cues to manage overeating rather than external management strategies, such as self-monitoring of food intake,” study co-author Dr. Kerri Boutelle, professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, said Medical News Today.
The study was published in the journal
For the study, the researchers recruited 271 adults with an average age of 47 years old and an average body mass index (BMI) of 34.6. A BMI of 25–30 is generally considered overweight, while a BMI of
The participants were divided into four groups: ROC, BWL, ROC combined with BWL (ROC+), and an active comparator group (AC).
ROC included four components: psychoeducation to increase awareness of situations, thoughts, models, and environments that lead to overeating; experiential learning, coping skills and self-monitoring.
For example, participants were taught how to monitor hunger, cravings and satiety before being “exposed” to highly appetizing foods to practice their new knowledge and skills.
Participants in the BWL group were provided with individualized calorie targets and given behavioral change recommendations, including:
- Self-monitoring
- Meal planning
- Cognitive restructuring relapse prevention skills
Meanwhile, the AC group underwent training in:
- Dietary intake
- Stress as a risk factor for weight gain
- Mindfulness-based stress reduction
- Sleep hygiene
- Time management
Each program was delivered through 26 90-minute group treatments over a 12-month period. All participants were also asked to engage in at least 150 minutes of moderate or vigorous physical activity per week and to achieve at least 10,000 steps per day.
The researchers monitored the participants for 2 years, including the treatment period and the following year.
At post-treatment assessment, those in the ROC, ROC+, and BWL groups experienced more significant reductions in BMI than those in the AC group.
This was notable, the researchers wrote, since ROC did not involve calorie restriction.
The ROC+ group experienced the greatest reduction in body fat post-treatment, followed by BWL, ROC, and then AC.
The researchers further noted that while ROC+, BWL, and AC groups regained weight mid-treatment, the weight of those in the ROC group stabilized from this point.
The researchers also noted that participants who scored higher on food responsiveness lost more weight in the ROC and ROC+ groups than in the BWL group.
This, they wrote, means that ROC-based treatments may be particularly effective for those who have trouble resisting food.
To explain the results, the researchers noted that ROC and BWL are fundamentally different approaches to weight loss. While ROC promotes the regulation of the internal response to food cues, BWL regulates external factors such as food intake.
When asked what food clues are, Dr. Boutelle said this includes sensory stimuli such as billboards and the sound of the ice cream man bell, along with associative memories linked to experiences of food, such as “visiting grandma’s house.”
The researchers wrote that ROC’s focus on learning to tolerate food cues may require less cognitive effort over time than avoiding them, as in BWL, which may explain ROC’s sustained weight loss effects.
The researchers concluded that ROC and ROC+ could be used as alternative interventions for people with overweight and obesity who have high levels of food reactivity.
The study has some limitations. Dr. Jena Shaw Tronieri, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the study, said MNT:
“These results were produced by an intensive intervention (frequent visits) delivered by highly trained providers to patients who were motivated to lose weight.”
“As with any intensive behavioral weight loss treatment, it can be challenging to find providers with the resources, time, and training to deliver intensive interventions in real-world settings. This can be especially challenging for new treatment methods that use psychological strategies.”
“We will need a follow-up study to confirm the preliminary finding that individuals with high food responsiveness may benefit more from ROC, or to test whether that feature can be used to match participants to the treatment that will be most effective for them, ” she explained.
“I would also be very interested to see a follow-up report of how the groups compared on additional primary outcomes such as percent weight loss and binge eating at each of the time points,” said Dr. Tronieri concluded.
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