Prevention of weight gain in young adults through a seminar-based intervention program

Abstract:

Objective: Prevention would be the ideal public health strategy to face the current obesity epidemic. Adoption of healthy lifestyles during the first years of college or university could prevent the onset of weight gain associated with this period of acquired independence and eventually decrease the incidence of obesity.

Design: Randomized-controlled trial over a period of 2 years. The subjects received an educational/behavioral intervention (small group seminars) designed to help maintain a healthy lifestyle or no specific intervention (control group).

Subjects: One-hundred and fifteen non-obese freshmen in a Faculty of Medicine.

Measurements: Anthropometric measurements, physical activity level, fitness level, food intake and lipid profile were recorded at predetermined intervals.

Results: The control group gained weight, whereas the intervention group lost a slight amount of weight over 2 years. The difference between the two groups was 1.3 kg at the end of the follow-up, the trend of weight gain differing between the two groups during the 2-year intervention period (P=0.04). There was no detectable difference in fitness, physical activity level or total caloric intake between the two groups during follow-up. However, plasma triglyceride levels increased in the control group and decreased in the intervention group (P=0.04).

Conclusion: In this randomized-controlled trial, a small-group seminar educational/behavioral intervention successfully prevents weight gain in normal weight young healthy university students. Such small absolute changes in body composition and lipid profile, if maintained over a prolonged period, could result in significant long-term health benefits for the general population (ClinicalTrial.gov registration number: NCT00306449).

My Opinion:

Hivert et al summarized that having seminar that related to physical activities to college level students help in preventing obesity and reduce the statistic of weight gain among college students within two years. Having a set of routine exercise during first year of college or university will lead to a positive impact in preventing obesity during senior year and post-college and eventually reduce the weight gain incidence among fresh graduate. Hivert et al did mentioned that having a large scale prevention program that targeted to general populations won’t have good result, same goes as prevention program at the level of school children.

Since this is one of the good method in reducing obesity incidence, I highly agree if the technique is applied in Indonesia and Malaysia universities. The article also paragraphed the contents of seminar and how it should be implemented. Some of the important points that mentioned are healthy diets, physical activities, quitting smoking and alcohol and frequent re-evaluation.

Physical activities play an important role in reducing weight gain. No matter the physical training is supervised or not, nevertheless, significant weight gain reduced is recorded by the college students. Of course with the help of healthy diet and no smoking and alcohol policies, a substantial positive progress towards a much healthy younger adult society.

Reference:

1.      Hivert, M., Langlois, M., Bérard, P., Cuerrier, J. and Carpentier, A. (2007). Prevention of weight gain in young adults through a seminar-based intervention program. International Journal of Obesity, [online] 31(8), p.1262. Available at: http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v31/n8/abs/0803572a.html [Accessed 31 Aug. 2016].