Prevention & Promotion in the Treatment of Obesity
Prevention & Promotion in the Treatment of Obesity
Making healthy food choices requires sacrificing immediate pleasures of consuming high
 calorie foods in order to achieve long-term health goals. Two strategies to encourage such
 future thinking are 1) focusing on the long-term consequences of consuming unhealthy foods,
 and 2) focusing on the long-term benefits of avoiding these unhealthy foods. Two novel
 behavioral weight loss (BWL) interventions will be developed based on these strategies
 (PREVENT and PROMOTE) and compared to standard Internet-delivered BWL to test their
 feasibility and efficacy in changing food choice decision-making, reducing food cravings, and
 ultimate weight loss.
Obesity is one of the most important public health issues today, contributing to many of the
 primary causes of morbidity and mortality in the United States. Still, treatment remains
 difficult and many people continually struggle to lose weight. Thus there is critical need
 for improvements in methods for treating obesity. One potential reason weight control is so
 difficult is the need to sacrifice immediate pleasures for long-term goals. This requires
 placing significant value on future outcomes, such as health.

 One strategy for doing so is to focus on the potential benefits of avoiding unhealthy
 choices. Health messaging studies suggest that messages focused on promoting long-term
 benefits of healthier choices may be effective in encouraging initiation of, or positive
 attitudes toward, healthy behaviors, however, longer-term effects of these messages have not
 been studied in the context of obesity. By contrast, behavioral economic work on Prospect
 Theory suggests focusing on preventing future negative consequences may be superior, and the
 threat of weight gain is a more powerful motivator than the benefit of weight loss. Although
 prevention strategies have been successfully employed in smoking cessation and anti-smoking
 campaigns, they are not typically used in obesity treatment. In promising preliminary
 neuroimaging work, the investigators identified increases in brain regions involved in
 inhibitory control and decreases in cravings when using this PREVENT strategy.

 The goal of this R03 is to test whether an intervention built upon the goal to PREVENT
 long-term consequences of weight gain versus an intervention built upon the goal to PROMOTE
 long-term benefits of weight loss is beneficial in altering valuation of health and taste in
 food choice decision-making, encouraging adherence, reducing food cravings and consumption,
 and ultimate weight loss, as compared to a standard behavioral weight loss program (BWL). A
 total of 90 overweight/obese men and women will be randomly assigned to either PREVENT,
 PROMOTE, or standard BWL. Each intervention will have one in-person training session wherein
 participants will learn key strategies of their assigned program, and the remaining 12 weekly
 lessons will be delivered via internet. Baseline and 3-month (post-treatment) assessments
 will include the food choice decision-making task featured in the parent K01 to measure
 valuation of health and taste, weight measurement, and measurement of food cravings and
 consumption. To address feasibility, adherence and engagement measures (i.e., lessons viewed,
 self-monitoring) will be collected during the internet program, and memory for lesson content
 will be assessed post-treatment. Individual difference measures will also be collected to
 provide preliminary data on factors that may influence success in each arm.

 This project tests innovative approaches in the clinical treatment of obesity and will
 provide new insights into the potential role of prevention versus promotion strategies for
 weight loss.
Inclusion Criteria:

 -  ages 25-60

 -  currently overweight or obese (BMI 25-45 kg/m2)

 Exclusion Criteria:

 -  lack of access to a computer and the Internet (needed once per week),

 -  weight loss medications

 -  neurological or psychiatric conditions including but not limited to schizophrenia, and
 bipolar disorder

 -  inability to attend assessments

 -  lack of interest in participating in a behavioral weight loss trial

 -  serious current physical disease for which physician supervision of diet and exercise
 prescription is needed

 -  physical problems that limit the ability to exercise

 -  participation in a weight loss program within the last 2 months

 -  intention to become pregnant in the next 3 months