ASSOCIATED PRESS RELEASE
6-12-98

MONITORING EXERCISE SPURS WEIGHT LOSS

TORONTO (AP) - People in an NIH sponsored weight-loss program got better results by wearing a beeper-sized activity monitor called the BioTrainer that showed how much exercise they were getting. The effect appeared as the participants were trying to maintain their weight loss. Those who wore an activity monitor that immediately informed them how they were doing, continued to lose weight, while other participants started to regain weight.

The feedback apparently helped motivate the participants to exercise, said psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Safer of Johns Hopkins University. He presented the findings of the study at the June 1998 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association.

"Anything that teaches us about maintaining weight loss is valuable," Kelly Bromwell, a psychologist who directs the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, said of the findings. "Weight loss is a difficult thing to achieve, and maintenance is even more difficult to accomplish."

The study focused on 35 people in their mid-40s who stuck with the weight-loss program through the end of the 32-week study. Eighteen had been randomly chosen to wear the device that provided immediate feedback of their activity on an LCD readout. Others wore a similar device that kept track of activity but didn't reveal their activity until the data were transferred to a computer every two weeks.

All the participants attended weekly group sessions for 16 weeks that stressed diet and exercise for losing weight. Then, for the following 16 weeks, they went to monthly sessions on how to keep the weight off.

All were told to walk more and increase their activity in everyday life. The immediate-feedback device continuously showed how much time a participant had spent walking at 1.5 mph or more each day.

People who wore these devices with feedback spent more time walking at 2 mph or higher than the other participants without feedback. The difference got progressively greater during the weight maintenance phase of the program, as the participants not getting immediate feedback fell back to about the activity levels they had at the start of the study.

At the end of the study, the average difference of walking time was about 40 minutes a day for the feedback group vs. about 30 minutes for the non feedback group. On average, people who got immediate feedback also continued to lose weight through the 32 weeks they were tracked, while the non feedback participants gained weight between weeks 28 -32.

At 32 weeks, the group that got immediate feedback had lost an average of 24.2 lbs. and the other participants lost an average of 14.4 lbs.