Psycho Educational Intervention in the Treatment of Obesity in a Health Center in the State of Nuevo Leon, Mexico

Abstract

Summary

Objective: to demonstrate the effectiveness of a psycho educational intervention for the management of obesity. Material and methods: intervention study, randomized by the method of tombola (raffle). The study included 60 women, attending a Family Medicine Unit, from 20 to 60 years of age with Body Mass Index (BMI)>27, and divided into two groups: experimental and control. It was collected Anthropometric data and the questionnaires applied were: Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) and the International Physical Activity Long Format (IPALF), to assess eating and physical activity habits before and after the intervention. It was used the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 19 for Windows, the t Student test was applied for basal evaluation and the Wilcoxon before and after with statistical significance of p<0.05. Results: it was achieved a reduction in weight of 2.6 kg (p=0.0001), BMI 1.2 (p=0.0001) and in the circumference of waist of 2.3 cm (p=0.001), demonstrating the effectiveness of the psycho-educational intervention, mainly based on the increase of vigorous physical activity rather than in improving their eating habits. Conclusion: it was found that as a result of the psycho-educational intervention there were significant changes in weight, BMI and waist circumference, having increased the number and duration of physical activities, rather than with the unique modification on dietary habits.