Evidence That a Very Brief Psychological Intervention Boosts Weight Loss in a Weight Loss Program
Section snippets
Implementation Intentions
Implementation intentions (Gollwitzer, 1993) are “if-then” plans that promote health behavior change by encouraging people to link in memory a critical situation (“if”) with an appropriate response (“then”). Laboratory studies show that specifying the “if” component of an implementation intention enhances the accessibility of critical situations and that linking “if” with “then” automates the response specified in the “then” component (see Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006). For example, one possible
Participants
In order to maximize the ecological validity of the study, the sample was recruited from people who were already enrolled on a commercial weight loss program in the north of England. A trained consultant delivered the commercial weight loss program. Participants stay in the program for as long as they wish and meet on a weekly basis at a cost of approximately $8 per week. People receive one-to-one advice as well as group sessions organized by the consultant. The sessions were oriented around
Randomization Check
Examining whether there were prerandomization differences in age, gender, BMI, height, weight, number of serious weight loss attempts, duration of program membership, and behavioral intention between the intervention and control groups served as a randomization check. All the tests were nonsignificant, meaning randomization was achieved (Table 1).
Effects of the Volitional Help Sheet
There was no significant main effect of condition, F(1, 70) = 0.40, p = .531, but there was a main effect of time, F(1, 62) = 177.03, p < .001, with
Summary
This is the first study to have tested a volitional help sheet in overweight people seeking to reduce their weight. The key finding was that the volitional help sheet—a very brief psychological intervention—was effective in significantly increasing weight loss, over and above the effects of ongoing weight management program. The results also extend the literature on the volitional help sheet by investigating weight loss and using an objective outcome measure in a clinical sample. The following
Conclusion
The present study reports a test of the efficacy of a very brief psychological intervention to enhance ongoing weight reduction efforts. The volitional help sheet was successful in increasing weight loss, with a medium-large effect size despite the brevity of the intervention. The volitional help sheet represents a very brief, low-cost intervention that could be used to supplement ongoing weight-loss programs.
Conflict of Interest Statement
The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.
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The effect of implementation intention on speeding and acceleration overtime: A simulator study
2021, Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and BehaviourCitation Excerpt :In general, implementation intentions are efficient, very brief, easy-to-use, and low-cost interventions. Subsequently, there is a growing body of research on health-related issues where implementation intentions are used as intervention tools for domains such as tobacco and alcohol consumption (e.g. Armitage, 2015), fat intake (Prestwich, Ayres, & Lawton, 2008), cervical cancer screening (Sheeran & Orbell, 2000), weight control (e.g. Armitage et al., 2014), daily fruit intake (e.g. de Nooijer, de Vet, Brug, de Vries, 2006), exercise (e.g. Budden & Sagarin, 2007), and healthy eating (e.g. Verplanken & Faes, 1999), as well as other issues that require behavioral changes, such as academic performance (Webb & Sheeran, 2007), or procrastination (Owens, Bowman, & Dill, 2008). Although its applications in the field of traffic and transportation psychology are not very common yet, issues such as obeying speed limits (Brewster et al., 2015; Elliott & Armitage, 2006) and habitual travel choices (Eriksson, Garvill, & Nordlund, 2008) have been studied and implementation intentions have been found to be effective.
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2017, Behavior TherapyCitation Excerpt :Fourth, a no-treatment control was not used; therefore, it is not possible to determine if the effects on physical activity are due to increases in the intervention condition or decreases in the control condition. There are two lines of evidence that the effect shown in this study is genuine: (a) previous studies that have compared standard volitional help sheets, active control and no-treatment have found null effects between the no-treatment and the active control (Armitage, 2008; Arden & Armitage, 2012) and (b) further studies have found no detrimental effects of the active control condition across a range of behaviors (Arden & Armitage, 2010; Arden & Armitage, 2012; Armitage, 2008; Armitage, 2015; Armitage & Arden 2012; Armitage, Norman, et al., 2014). A fifth possible limitation is that there seemed to be a high rate of noncompliance with the intervention as 26.74% of those allocated to the intervention conditions did not fill in the volitional help sheets as instructed.
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2016, Veterinary Clinics of North America - Small Animal PracticeEvidence That a Volitional Help Sheet Reduces Alcohol Consumption Among Smokers: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial
2015, Behavior TherapyCitation Excerpt :By including an active control group it was further established that the effects of the volitional help sheet are not attributable to the demands associated with asking people to plan to change their behavior. Consistent with a growing body of research on the impact of volitional help sheets on health behavior change (e.g., Arden & Armitage, 2012; Armitage, 2008; Armitage & Arden, 2012; Armitage, Norman, Noor, Alganem, & Arden, 2014), the present study showed that the volitional help sheet was efficacious in reducing alcohol consumption in a sample of smokers in a field setting without potentially costly tailoring or targeting. Importantly, simply being asked to plan does not account for the observed effects: Smokers in the intervention condition were asked explicitly to link critical situations with appropriate responses.