Adolescents participating in weight loss programs experience difficulty adhering to behavior change recommendations. Communications technology provides a low cost means to increase the frequency of contact with adolescents which can improve their engagement and also lead to behavior change. Within a larger project on the development of tailored text messages for adolescents enrolled in an exist...

BACKGROUND Web-based commercial weight loss programs are increasing in popularity. Despite their significant public health potential, there is limited research on the effectiveness of such programs. OBJECTIVE The objective of our study was to examine weight losses produced by DietBet and explore whether baseline and engagement variables predict weight outcomes. METHODS DietBet is a social g...

BACKGROUND Identifying factors associated with effective treatment for childhood obesity is important to improving weight loss outcomes. The current study investigated whether child or parent motivation throughout the course of treatment predicted reductions in BMI. METHODS Fifty 8- to 12-year-old children with overweight and obesity (BMI percentiles 85-98%) and their parents participated in ...

WHO & WHERE Our practice consists of 2 family physicians and 1 family nurse practitioner. Our behavioral intervention program uses the 5 A’s of Behavior Change model1 and is based on Change Control Diet,2 by Harry H. Suiter, who himself struggled with weight management for decades. In collaboration with Mr. Suiter, we have developed a formal office-based weight loss program with Mr. Suiter’s bo...

Human-robot interaction is now understood well enough to allow us to build useful systems that can function outside of the laboratory. In my work, I propose the concept of a sociable robot system, which consists of a robot as a user interface to a complex system. The problem that I address as a use for such a system is a system to assist people who are trying to lose or maintain weight to remai...

Preventing weight regain after the loss of excess weight is challenging for people, especially for ethnic minorities in the United States. A 6-month weight loss maintenance intervention designed for Pacific Islanders, called the PILI Lifestyle Program (PLP), was compared with a 6-month standard behavioral weight loss maintenance program (SBP) in a pilot randomized controlled trial using a commu...

The role of insulin in the regulation of blood pressure was evaluated in 50 obese adolescents before and after a 20-week weight loss program. When compared with 10 nonobese adolescents, the obese subjects had significantly higher systolic, diastolic, and mean arterial pressures (p = 0.005), an elevated 24-hour urinary sodium excretion (p = 0.002), an elevated fasting insulin concentration (p = ...

Background & Aims: One of the problems hindering people’s success in losing weight is their lack of knowledge about the limitations they face. The aim of this research was to investigate the contributing factors to BMI decrease in women referring to the clinic for weight reduction programs. Method: In this cross-sectional study, the medical files of 100 women (18-65 years old) with BMI>23, bein...