tage of obesity," Bennett, who led the new examine, advised Reuters Health.

Program Could Help Black Women Avoid Weight Acquire

NY (Reuters Health) - A program including self-monitoring, gym entry and occasional counseling calls helped black girls preserve their weight in a new examine.
Black ladies who're obese or slightly overweight are known to have a decrease threat of weight-related well being problems than white ladies at the same weight.
Research suggests they're usually also extra satisfied with their bodies and appear to care less than white women about shedding additional kilos, Gary Bennett, head of the Duke Weight problems Prevention Program in Durham, North Carolina, and his colleagues stated.
However, "If black ladies proceed to gain weight 12 months and after year, and so they virtually invariably do … they go from that decrease degree of obesity, the place well being dangers are comparatively low, to that higher stage of obesity," Bennett, who led the new examine, advised Reuters Health.
He said focusing on weight upkeep could possibly be a better technique for women who're just a bit heavy and are not thinking about reducing weight or who've tried with out success.
To check that idea, Bennett and his colleagues recruited 194 obese and overweight black ladies from neighborhood well being facilities for their study, which they specifically prevented calling a weight-loss trial. The ladies had been between 25 and 44 years old with a median weight of 178 pounds, and nearly three-quarters of them had an annual earnings below $30,000.
Half of the women had been randomly assigned to undergo the 12 months-lengthy program, which included self-monitoring via an automatic calling system, monthly counseling calls, suggestions on nutritious diet objectives and a membership to the YMCA. The other half obtained their typical care.
The concept of the diet objectives - which included limiting sugary drinks or avoiding fast food, for instance - was to have girls devour no more than 200 fewer energy than they burned every day.
Of the unique individuals, 177 completed the research. At the one-yr mark, girls in the weight gain prevention program had misplaced a median of about two kilos; those within the comparison group had gained about one pound. These variations held for an additional six months after this system ended.
Moreover, sixty two percent of program participants had been at or under their authentic weight at one yr, in comparison with 45 % of those that have been assigned to obtain normal care, the researchers reported Monday in JAMA Inside Medicine.
Bennett and his colleagues didn't find any differences in waist circumference, blood strain or ldl cholesterol between women who did and didn't undergo the weight acquire prevention program, nonetheless.
In a commentary printed with the study, Dr. Regina Benjamin - till just lately the U.S. Surgeon Common - and colleagues called the findings "promising."
However, they wrote, "It could be that better weight losses than those reported … are required to attain improvements in cardiovascular disease danger elements, and weight maintenance might must be sustained longer to attain such well being advantages."
Bennett stated that because the research program was coordinated via main care offices and largely computerized, it was cheaper than a weight-loss intervention and should be possible in a spread of communities.
"This can be a very simple, easy intervention for us to disseminate very broadly," he mentioned.
For heavy people who cannot or don't wish to shed some pounds, "maintaining and not gaining weight should be absolutely the clinical priority," he stated. "There's no cause for a physician not to do this."
SOURCE: /KEPNSw JAMA Inside Drugs, online August 26, 2013.
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